Technology boosts the adaptive optics market
Defense and Biomedicine Sectors are developing new ways to make use of high-quality pictures, such as wavefront sensors
The adaptive optics market has a promising future ahead. According to a recent study by Business Research Insights, the sector generated 850 million USD in 2024 alone, a figure that is going to look small in the coming years. This is because the key takeaway from the analysis is that this market will be able to enjoy an annual growth rate of 23,1% by 2032. But this brings a question to mind, what makes this area of science so special that it can move so much money?
Adaptive optics was born thanks to astronomy, and to this day it’s still the field that makes the most out of this technology. It was the answer to the problem that observatories encountered every time they tried to study distant celestial bodies, when the atmosphere distorted the images, they captured. However, after installing adaptive optics systems, the light that reaches the observatories encounters a wavefront sensor, a device that measures its properties. This device sends the information to a deformable mirror, which changes its shape to manipulate the light beam and correct the deformations it experienced after crossing the atmosphere. This closed-loop system corrects aberrations in real time, producing a sharp, high-resolution image.
In adaptive optics systems, incoming light reaches a deformable mirror that manipulates it to fix the deformations made by the environment. It then lands on a detector that gives the necessary information to build sharp, high-resolution images
Every day the demand for this kind of high-quality images grows, which has served to drive innovation and spread adaptive optics into new areas. For some sectors, acquiring sharp, clean images is invaluable, such as the military and the security and defense industries, that rely on them for surveillance and laser communications. They’re also very important for biomedicine, especially now that the rise of AI makes it possible to create systems that quickly analyze cell images to detect cancerous ones before the disease worsens. Another sector that benefits from adaptive optics is industrial manufacturing, both to detect almost invisible but critical defects and to work at very small scales with surgical precision.
This growing demand for high-resolution imaging is precisely one of the main reasons driving this market. Outside of astronomy, more and more applications are emerging, which in turn drive research and innovation work to find new and better solutions. All this contributes to growing the market, which also sees an increase in demand by offering more solutions. At this moment, we find ourselves at a point in time when we will see the development of new wavefront sensors for uses outside of astronomy, built to answer the challenges found in other sectors.
At Wooptix we’ve developed SEBI® RT1000, which takes inspiration from the wavefront sensors implemented in observatories. With a compact, easy-to-use design and a transformable lens, it can capture both of the pieces that make up light, intensity and phase, at the same time. This device is powered by Wooptix’s WFPI technology, the basis of all our work, which originates from research done at the Astrophysics Department of the University of La Laguna and the Teide Observatory.
Among those that were part of this team is our CEO, José Manuel Rodríguez Ramos, who wrote his doctoral thesis on real-time image correction with a deformable mirror. This thesis led to the patent of the Wooptix wavefront sensor, which in turn paved the way to the SEBI® RT1000, capable of achieving sharp images at a nanometer scale and in real time.
According to the BRI study, the adaptive optics market is a dynamic sector enjoying a period of rapid evolution
BRI came to a very positive conclusion about the adaptive optics market. According to them, this dynamic sector is enjoying a period of rapid evolution, with constant advances not only in the technology developed, but also in the ways it can be used. One of the most promising advances is MEMS, or microelectromechanical systems, which allow for smaller and more precise deformable mirrors, opening the door to much more compact and affordable systems.
SEBI® RT1000 follows in this trajectory of innovation and accuracy, seeking to provide the best tools to help adaptive optics stay in this state of constant evolution.
More info: SEBI® RT1000
Daniel Cuartero
About Wooptix
Wooptix is a leader in optical metrology through wavefront phase, a technique coming from adaptive optics in astronomy. Since the early 2000s, Wooptix has being improving and optimizing the proprietary algorithms running on the WFPI technique (WaveFront Phase Imaging), thanks to the brilliant team.
The company has developed SEBI® RT1000, a wavefront phase camera that introduces exceptionally high phase sampling (1.000 x 1.000), a real time processing (30 FPS), and an absolute Wavefront Accuracy (λ/30 RMS) for the most challenging measurement tasks. Wooptix is headquartered in Tenerife, Madrid (Spain), and San Francisco (USA).