The sidelobe phenomenon of acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF)-based
hyperspectral imaging is the result of the phase mismatching
condition, which will reduce the quality of hyperspectral imaging
data. This phenomenon can be observed in two specified scenes, namely,
high brightness panchromatic target imaging and high brightness
monochromatic target imaging. In this paper, the acousto-optic
interaction in these two scenes is discussed using the phase matching
condition. As a follow-up work of the previous related research, this
paper studies laser interference in AOTF imaging, which is a typical
example of the second case. A method to remove laser sidelobes in
AOTF-based hyperspectral imaging is proposed, which combines a series
of procedures including laser point extraction, reverse imaging before
AOTF, ray tracing in AOTF, forward imaging process after AOTF, and
laser elimination. Experimental results have verified the
effectiveness of the proposed method.