Error-Control-Coding Assisted Imaging

TL;DR

This paper introduces ECC assisted imaging, a novel technique that applies error-control coding to improve image quality by reducing noise effects during image acquisition, demonstrated through a proof-of-concept experiment.

Contribution

It pioneers the integration of error-control coding into imaging systems, showing significant noise reduction and improved image reconstruction.

Findings

ECC can significantly reduce noise in imaging

Digital-micromirror-device structured light enhances encoding

Effective image reconstruction demonstrated with LT code

Abstract

Error-control-coding (ECC) techniques are widely used in modern digital communication systems to minimize the effect of noisy channels on the quality of received signals. Motivated by the fact that both communication and imaging can be considered as an information transfer process, in this paper we demonstrate that ECC could yield significant improvements in the image quality by reducing the effect of noise in the physical process of image acquisition. In the demonstrated approach, the object is encoded by ECC structured light fields generated by a digital-micromirror-device (DMD) while its image is obtained by decoding the received signal collected by a bucket-detector (BD). By applying a Luby Transform (LT) code as an example, our proof-of-concept experiment validates that the object image can be effectively reconstructed while errors induced by noisy reception can be significantly reduced. The demonstrated approach informs a new imaging technique: ECC assisted imaging, which can be scaled into applications such as remote sensing, spectroscopy and biomedical imaging.