title: First-photon imaging.
abstract: Imagers that use their own illumination can capture three-dimensional (3D) structure and reflectivity information. With photon-counting detectors, images can be acquired at extremely low photon fluxes. To suppress the Poisson noise inherent in low-flux operation, such imagers typically require hundreds of detected photons per pixel for accurate range and reflectivity determination. We introduce a low-flux imaging technique, called first-photon imaging, which is a computational imager that exploits spatial correlations found in real-world scenes and the physics of low-flux measurements. Our technique recovers 3D structure and reflectivity from the first detected photon at each pixel. We demonstrate simultaneous acquisition of sub-pulse duration range and 4-bit reflectivity information in the presence of high background noise. First-photon imaging may be of considerable value to both microscopy and remote sensing.
authors.affiliation: Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Ahmed
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kirmani
authors.forename: Dheera
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Venkatraman
authors.forename: Dongeek
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Shin
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Colaço
authors.forename: Franco N C
authors.initials: FN
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.forename: Jeffrey H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Shapiro
authors.forename: Vivek K
authors.initials: VK
authors.lastname: Goyal
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D017785:Photons