Encircled energy
In optics, encircled energy is a measure of concentration of energy in an image, or projected laser at a given range. For example, if a single star is brought to its sharpest focus by a lens giving the smallest image possible with that given lens (called a point spread function or PSF), calculation of the encircled energy of the resulting image gives the distribution of energy in that PSF. Encircled energy is calculated by first determining the total energy of the PSF over the full image plane, then determining the centroid of the PSF. Circles of increasing radius are then created at that centroid and the PSF energy within each circle is calculated and divided by the total energy.