An FPGA-based on-chip system for real-time single pixel imaging

Single pixel imaging finds many applications such as fluorescence imaging and three-dimensional imaging for its immunity to background noises and flexible implementation. Many reconstruction algorithms were proposed in the literature but only implemented on computers, where offline data processing are applied. For real time imaging, a Field Programmable Gate Array(FPGA)-based on-chip system is introduced in this work. It utilizes an FPGA to realize compact integration and low power consumption for single pixel imaging. All computations involved in the image reconstruction are carried out in the FPGA, and it yields an image from the data series collected on a single detector. The system can achieve a real time frame rate of up to 10.256 frames per second (fps) for images of size of 32 × 32, and the imaging speed is optimized to be 4.66 fps to balance the image quality and speed.