Preface

The speckle phenomenon is ubiquitous in many fields of science and technology. Speckle phenomena can be seen in many different imaging modalities, including acoustical imaging (e.g., medical ultrasound) and microwave imaging (e.g., synthetic-aperture radar imaging). This book focuses on simulating optical speckle with Mathematica, but the same methods used can in many cases be applied to other imaging modalities.

The reader may wonder why Mathematica has been chosen as the software package for this book. There are several reasons for this choice. First, and most important, Mathematica allows the interspersing of both continuous and discrete calculations under one umbrella. Second, using Mathematica, text, code, and illustrations can be included in the same document. Third, using Mathematica we can create dynamic figures, parameters of which the user can change at will. However, such manipulation cannot be performed in the printed version of the book, so we have avoided manipulable figures in what follows and replaced them by arrays of static figures. Lastly, this author loves Mathematica for its flexibility and comprehensiveness. It seems there are almost an infinite set of capabilities of the program, many of which lie hidden for the novice user but which gradually are revealed as the use of the program increases. This book has been written entirely in Mathematica. It can be read with the full program Mathematica or with the free program Wolfram Player available for download from the Wolfram site. The Mathematica files for all chapters are available online. This book is meant as a companion to the book Speckle Phenomena in Optics: Theory and Applications, 2nd Edition, published by SPIE Press. An extensive list of references can be found in that book.

Joseph W. Goodman
Stanford University