Sparse Fourier single-pixel imaging.

Fourier single-pixel imaging is one of the main single-pixel imaging techniques. To improve the imaging efficiency, some of the recent method typically select the low-frequency and discard the high-frequency information to reduce the number of acquired samples. However, sampling only a small amount of low-frequency components will lead to the loss of object details and will reduce the imaging resolution. At the same time, the ringing effect of the restored image due to frequency truncation is significant. In this paper, a new sparse Fourier single-pixel imaging method is proposed that reduces the number of samples explorations while maintaining increased image quality. The proposed method makes a special use of the characteristics of the Fourier spectrum distribution based on which the power of image information decreases gradually from low to high frequencies in the Fourier space. A variable density random sampling matrix is employed to achieve random sampling with Fourier single-pixel imaging technology, followed by the processing of the sparse Fourier spectra using compressive sensing algorithms to recover the high-quality information of the object. The new algorithm can effectively improve the quality of object restoration comparing with the existing Fourier single-pixel imaging methods which only acquire the low-frequency parts. Additionally, considering that the resolution of the system is diffraction limited, super-resolution imaging can also be achieved. Experimental results demonstrate the mainly correctness but also effectiveness of the proposed method.