Fast Photon-Counting Imaging With Low Acquisition Time Method

Photon-counting LIDAR has effective ability to detect significantly weak echo. However, for imaging application, it typically needs a long acquisition time to obtain sufficient counts to reconstruct clear depth image, which obviously limits imaging efficiency and prevents its wide deployment. In this paper, we proposed a low acquisition time photon-counting imaging method based on two single element SPADs and pixel scanning structure. Compared to fast imaging with SPAD array, the method has low requirement on laser energy and can obtain depth image with arbitrary pixel resolution. Experiment result demonstrates its feasibility and a dynamic target can be clearly captured by the system with our specifically designed reconstruction algorithm. We also detailly investigated the working conditions for the method. It reveals more than 2 echo photons per pulse would be enough to reconstruct clear depth image even when noise is intensive. Restricted to our 10 KHz laser source, the result only exhibited 1 frame per second(fps) imaging with pixel resolution of 100*100. If a common 10 MHz laser is adopted, 512*512 pixels resolution images can be captured at the rate of nearly 40 fps.