Point Spread Function Deconvolution Using a Convolutional Autoencoder for Astronomical Applications

A major issue in optical astronomical image analysis is the combined effect of the instrument's point spread function (PSF) and the atmospheric seeing that blurs images and changes their shape in a way that is band and time-of-observation dependent. In this work we present a very simple neural network based approach to non-blind image deconvolution that relies on feeding a Convolutional Autoencoder (CAE) input images that have been preprocessed by convolution with the corresponding PSF and its regularized inverse. Compared to our previous work based on Deep Wiener Deconvolution, the new approach is conceptually simpler and computationally much less intensive while achieving only marginally worse results. In this work we also present a new approach for dealing with limited input dynamic range of neural networks compared to the dynamic range present in astronomical images.