Imaging with a small number of photons

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel single-photon imaging system that uses ghost imaging, heralded photons, and compressed sensing to produce high-quality images with extremely few detected photons, enabling effective low-light imaging.

Contribution

It introduces a combined approach of ghost imaging, heralded single-photons, and compressed sensing for efficient low-light-level imaging with minimal photon detection.

Findings

High-quality images obtained from fewer than one photon per pixel.

Ghost imaging reduces background noise and enhances signal-to-noise ratio.

Effective imaging with extremely low photon counts demonstrates potential for low-light applications.

Abstract

Low-light-level imaging techniques have application in many diverse fields, ranging from biological sciences to security. We demonstrate a single-photon imaging system based on a time-gated inten- sified CCD (ICCD) camera in which the image of an object can be inferred from very few detected photons. We show that a ghost-imaging configuration, where the image is obtained from photons that have never interacted with the object, is a useful approach for obtaining images with high signal-to-noise ratios. The use of heralded single-photons ensures that the background counts can be virtually eliminated from the recorded images. By applying techniques of compressed sensing and associated image reconstruction, we obtain high-quality images of the object from raw data comprised of fewer than one detected photon per image pixel.