Alfred S. Carasso received a second patent (No. 5627918, May 6, 1997, ( Procedure for Digital Image Restoration) for his SECB image restoration approach. This procedure is based on constraining the blurring kernel rather than the unknown image, in order o stabilize the ill-posed reconstruction problem against noise amplification. As a consequence, smoothness constraints are not imposed in the SECB procedure, while they are necessary in most other restoration methods. In many contexts involving medical imaging, surveillance, nondestructive evaluation, and the like, where fine structure is of prime interest, the SECB method results in superior restorations than is possible with reconstruction algorithms that enforce smoothness on the restored image.