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In angular differential imaging, the instrument is operated in pupil tracking: its pupil and associated quasi-static speckle patterns remain nearly fixed on the detector, while the sky rotates with the parallactic angle. A reference stellar point spread function is formed from other exposures, preferably excluding frames where a companion remains at almost the same location. Subtract the reference from each exposure, then derotate the residuals into the sky frame and combine them. A companion adds coherently after derotation; the stellar residuals are reduced. This is the technique described in the original angular-differential-imaging analysis. At angular separation $\rho$, the approximate displacement is $\rho \Delta \psi$, so useful diversity normally requires $\rho |\Delta \psi |\gtrsim \lambda /D$.

In simultaneous spectral differential imaging, acquire nearby spectral-band images simultaneously, for example with a beam splitter and filters or an integral field spectrograph. Stellar speckle patterns approximately move radially in proportion to wavelength. Rescale each image by ${\lambda }_0/\lambda$ and normalize the stellar flux before subtracting bands. The speckles then approximately align, while a companion at a fixed sky position moves in the rescaled coordinates. A companion absorption band can also distinguish its spectrum from the star: methane bands are useful for cool companions, as in the TRIDENT instrument description, but methane is not a universal companion property. Positional diversity scales as $\rho |\Delta \lambda |/\lambda$.

The main optical path is telescope to deformable mirror to beam splitter to science camera. The splitter also directs reference light to a wavefront sensor; a controller reconstructs the wavefront error and feeds mirror commands back to the deformable mirror. The mirror is normally conjugate to a pupil so its actuators address the corresponding pupil phase. A separate steering mirror can handle overall image motion.