Image processing challenges in weak gravitational lensing
  The field of weak gravitational lensing, which measures the basic properties
of the Universe by studying the way that light from distant galaxies is
perturbed as it travels towards us, is a very active field in astronomy. This
short article presents a broad overview of the field, including some of the
important questions that cosmologists are trying to address, such as
understanding the nature of dark energy and dark matter. To do this, there is
an increasing feeling within the weak lensing community that other disciplines,
such as computer science, machine learning, signal processing and image
processing, have the expertise that would bring enormous advantage if
channelled into lensing studies. To illustrate this point, the article below
outlines some of the key steps in a weak lensing analysis chain. The challenges
are distinct at each step, but each could benefit from ideas developed in the
signal processing domain. This article also gives a brief overview of current
and planned lensing experiments that will soon bring about an influx of data
sets that are substantially larger than those analysed to date. It is,
therefore, inevitable that current techniques are likely to be insufficient,
thus leading to an exciting era where new methods will become crucial for the
continued success of the field.
