Long-range time-of-flight scanning sensor based on high-speed time-correlated single-photon counting

McCarthy, Aongus; Collins, Robert J.; Krichel, Nils J.; Fernández, Verónica; Wallace, Andrew M.; Buller, Gerald S.

doi:10.1364/ao.48.006241

Cited by 285 publications

(185 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Innovations in both single-photon detectors [3,6] and data acquisition technology [7] in recent years have transformed time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC) into an advantageous and practical approach to next generation ToF range-finding and depth imaging systems. Recent laboratory and field trial demonstrations have illustrated the benefits of shot-noise limited detection and a picosecond system response in terms of low light sensitivity limits and excellent surface-to-surface resolution [5,8]. A number of important emerging application areas may benefit from the use of single-photon ToF, especially where remote sensing is a necessary requirement.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kilometer-range, high resolution depth imaging via 1560 nm wavelength single-photon detection

McCarthy¹,

Krichel²,

Gemmell³

et al. 2013

Opt. Express

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266

154

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This paper highlights a significant advance in time-of-flight depth imaging: by using a scanning transceiver which incorporated a freerunning, low noise superconducting nanowire single-photon detector, we were able to obtain centimeter resolution depth images of low-signature objects in daylight at stand-off distances of the order of one kilometer at the relatively eye-safe wavelength of 1560 nm. The detector used had an efficiency of 18% at 1 kHz dark count rate, and the overall system jitter was ~100 ps. The depth images were acquired by illuminating the scene with an optical output power level of less than 250 µW average, and using per-pixel dwell times in the millisecond regime.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kilometer-range, high resolution depth imaging via 1560 nm wavelength single-photon detection

McCarthy¹,

Krichel²,

Gemmell³

et al. 2013

Opt. Express

Self Cite

266

154

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Many LIDAR systems have employed single-photon detectors [3][4][5]. Because the single-photon detector is able to resolve individual photon detections, it can be useful for low-light applications such as remote 3D sensing, in which light travels long distances and only a small amount of flux is incident at the detector.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Computational single-photon depth imaging without transverse regularization

Shin

Shapiro

Goyal

2016

2016 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP)

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Depth profile reconstruction of a scene at low light levels using an active imaging setup has wide-ranging applications in remote sensing. In such low-light imaging scenarios, single-photon detectors are employed to time-resolve individual photon detections. However, even with single-photon detectors, current frameworks are limited to using hundreds of photon detections at each pixel to mitigate Poisson noise inherent in light detection. In this paper, we discuss two pixelwise imaging frameworks that allow accurate reconstruction of depth profiles using small numbers of photon detections. The first framework addresses the problem of depth reconstruction of an opaque target, in which it is assumed that each pixel contains exactly one reflector. The second framework addresses the problem of reconstructing multiple-depth pixels. In each scenario, our framework achieves photon efficiency by combining accurate statistics for individual photon detections with a longitudinal sparsity constraint tailored to the imaging problem. We demonstrate the photon efficiencies of our frameworks by comparing them with conventional imagers that use more naïve models based on high light-level assumptions.

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“…These devices, collectively referred to as quantum image sensors (QIS) in this work, are envisioned as the next generation imaging technology after CMOS [3], with numerous applications [4][5][6][7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficient image reconstruction for gigapixel quantum image sensors

Chan

2014

2014 IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing (GlobalSIP)

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Recent advances in materials, devices and fabrication technologies have motivated a strong momentum in developing solid-state sensors that can detect individual photons in space and time. It has been envisioned that such sensors can eventually achieve very high spatial resolutions (e.g., 109 pixels/chip) as well as high frame rates (e.g., 106 frames/sec). In this paper, we present an efficient algorithm to reconstruct images from the massive binary bit-streams generated by these sensors. Based on the concept of alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM), we transform the computationally intensive optimization problem into a sequence of subproblems, each of which has efficient implementations in the form of polyphase-domain filtering or pixel-wise nonlinear mappings. Moreover, we reformulate the original maximum likelihood estimation as maximum a posterior estimation by introducing a total variation prior. Numerical results demonstrate the strong performance of the proposed method, which achieves several dB's of improvement in PSNR and requires a shorter runtime as compared to standard gradient-based approaches.

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Long-range time-of-flight scanning sensor based on high-speed time-correlated single-photon counting

Cited by 285 publications

References 29 publications

Kilometer-range, high resolution depth imaging via 1560 nm wavelength single-photon detection

Kilometer-range, high resolution depth imaging via 1560 nm wavelength single-photon detection

Computational single-photon depth imaging without transverse regularization

Efficient image reconstruction for gigapixel quantum image sensors

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