Abstract
Photon-counting integral imaging has been introduced recently, and its applications in three-dimensional (3D) object sensing, visualization, recognition, and classification under photon-starved conditions have been demonstrated. This paper sheds light on the underlying information-theoretic foundation behind the ability of photon-counting integral imaging in performing complex tasks with far fewer photons than conventional imaging systems. A metric for photon-information content is formulated in the context of 3D photon-counting imaging, and its properties are investigated. It is shown that there is an inherent trade-off between imaging fidelity, measured by the entropy-normalized mutual information associated with a given imaging system, and the amount of information in each photon used in the imaging process, as represented by the photon-number–normalized mutual information. The dependence of this trade-off on photon statistics, correlation in the 3D image, and the signal-to-noise ratio of the photon-detection system is also investigated.
© 2012 Optical Society of America
Full Article | PDF ArticleMore Like This
Srikanth R. Narravula, Majeed M. Hayat, and Bahram Javidi
Opt. Express 18(3) 2449-2466 (2010)
Chung Ghiu Lee, Inkyu Moon, and Bahram Javidi
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 29(6) 854-860 (2012)
Xiao Xiao and Bahram Javidi
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 29(5) 767-771 (2012)