The resolution of a conventional imaging system based on first-order field correlation can be directly obtained from the optical transfer function. However, it is challenging to determine the resolution of an imaging system through random media, including imaging through scattering media and imaging through randomly inhomogeneous media, since the point-to-point correspondence between the object and the image plane in these systems cannot be established by the first-order field correlation anymore. In this Letter, from the perspective of ghost imaging, we demonstrate for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, that the point-to-point correspondence in these imaging systems can be quantitatively recovered from the second-order correlation of light fields, and the imaging capability, such as resolution, of such imaging schemes can thus be derived by analyzing second-order autocorrelation of the optical transfer function. Based on this theoretical analysis, we propose a lensless Wiener–Khinchin telescope based on second-order spatial autocorrelation of thermal light, which can acquire the image of an object by a snapshot via using a spatial random phase modulator. As an incoherent imaging approach illuminated by thermal light, the lensless Wiener–Khinchin telescope can be applied in many fields such as X-ray astronomical observations.

Ghost imaging and diffraction, inspired by the Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect, have potential in both classical and quantum optics regimes on account of their nonlocal characteristics and subwavelength resolution capability, and therefore have aroused particular interest. By extending the correspondence imaging scheme, we utilize the positive and negative intensity correlations in diffraction and perform subwavelength diffraction with pseudo-thermal light. In the experiment, a subwavelength (λ/2) resolution and a better signal-to-noise ratio (10.3% improvement) are simultaneously achieved. The scheme can be utilized as a complement to the existing ghost imaging scheme to improve image quality.

For a Hanbury Brown and Twiss system, the influence of relative motion between the object and the detection plane on the resolution of second-order intensity-correlated imaging is investigated. The analytical results, which are backed up by experiments, demonstrate that the amplitude and mode of the object’s motion have no effect on the second-order intensity-correlated imaging and that high-resolution imaging can be always achieved by using a phase-retrieval method from the diffraction patterns. The use of motion de-blurring imaging for this approach is also discussed.

Correlation imaging is attracting more and more attention as a novel imaging technique taking advantage of the high-order coherence of light fields. To reconstruct an image of the object, many frames of different speckle patterns are required. Therefore, the speed of imaging is strongly limited by the speed of the refreshing rate of the light field. We propose a coprime-frequencied sinusoidal modulation method for speckle pattern creation using a spatial light modulator in a computational ghost imaging system to increase the speed of imaging. The performance of the proposed method is discussed as well.