In one embodiment, a method of operating a glare reduction and ranging optical system having an image sensor with pixels is provided. The method comprises: generating a first light beam with a power spectral density; generating a reference light beam from the first light beam; emitting the first light beam with a power spectral density; collecting scattered light and reflected light respectively reflected from a scattering medium and a target; determining a power spectral density of the first light beam so that the first light beam is substantially coherent with the scattered light; adjusting the power spectral density of the first light beam so that the reference light beam is substantially coherent with the scattered light; on a pixel by pixel basis, modifying the amplitude and phase of the reference light beam to minimize the DC light power at each pixel; storing the modified amplitude and phase that results in a substantially minimum detected DC light power for each pixel; increasing power spectral density of a second reference light beam; modulating the amplitude of the second reference light beam with a sinusoidal signal having a frequency; on a pixel by pixel basis, detecting the substantially maximum signal level at the modulation frequency on a pixel by adjusting a second delay of the reference light beam; and determining range to a target.