• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.388-394
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• 2010

In this paper the object recognition performance of a photon counting integral imaging system is quantitatively compared with that of a conventional gray scale imaging system. For 3D imaging of objects with a small number of photons, the elemental image set of a 3D scene is obtained using the integral imaging set up. We assume that the elemental image detection follows a Poisson distribution. Computational geometrical ray back propagation algorithm and parametric maximum likelihood estimator are applied to the photon counting elemental image set in order to reconstruct the original 3D scene. To evaluate the photon counting object recognition performance, the normalized correlation peaks between the reconstructed 3D scenes are calculated for the varied and fixed total number of photons in the reconstructed sectional image changing the total number of image channels in the integral imaging system. It is quantitatively illustrated that the recognition performance of the photon counting integral imaging system can be similar to that of a conventional gray scale imaging system as the number of image viewing channels in the photon counting integral imaging (PCII) system is increased up to the threshold point. Also, we present experiments to find the threshold point on the total number of image channels in the PCII system which can guarantee a comparable recognition performance with a gray scale imaging system. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on comparisons of object recognition performance with 3D photon counting & gray scale images.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.228-233
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• 2016

In this paper, we propose a nonlinear maximum average correlation height (MACH) filter for information authentication of photon counting double random phase encryption (DRPE). To enhance the security of DRPE, photon counting imaging can be applied because of its sparseness. However, under severely photon-starved conditions, information authentication of DRPE may not be implemented successfully. To visualize the photon counting DRPE, a three-dimensional imaging technique such as integral imaging can be used. In addition, a nonlinear MACH filter can be utilized for helping the information authentication. Therefore, in this paper, we use integral imaging and nonlinear MACH filter to implement the information authentication of photon counting DRPE. To verify our method, we implement optical experiments and computer simulation.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.357-361
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• 2011

Photon-counting sensing is a widely used technique for low-light-level imaging applications. This paper proposes a distance information extraction method with photon-counting passive sensing under low-lightlevel conditions. The photo-counting passive sensing combined with integral imaging generates a photon-limited elemental image array. Maximum-likelihood estimation (MLE) is used to reconstruct the photon-limited image at certain depth levels. The distance information is extracted at the depth level that minimizes the sum of the standard deviation of the corresponding photo-events in the elemental image array. Experimental and simulation results confirm that the proposed method can extract the distance information of the object under low-light-level conditions.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.276-283
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• 2021

In this paper, we propose an effective noise reduction method for photon counting imaging using a discrete wavelet transform. Conventional 2D photon counting imaging was used to visualize the object under dark conditions using statistical methods, such as the Poisson random process. The photons in the scene were estimated using a statistical method. However, photons which disturb the visualization and decrease the image quality may occur in the background where there is no object. Although median filters are used to reduce the noise, the noise in the scene remains. To remove the noise effectively, our proposed method uses the discrete wavelet transform, which removes the noise in the scene using a specific thresholding method that utilizes photon counting imaging characteristics. We conducted an optical experiment to demonstrate the denoising performance of the proposed method.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.88-92
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• 2008

This paper discusses a photon-counting linear discriminant analysis (LDA) with computational integral imaging (II). The computational II method reconstructs three-dimensional (3D) objects on the reconstruction planes located at arbitrary depth-levels. A maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) can be used to estimate the Poisson parameters of photon counts in the reconstruction space. The photon-counting LDA combined with the computational II method is developed in order to classify partially occluded objects with photon-limited images. Unknown targets are classified with the estimated Poisson parameters while reconstructed irradiance images are trained. It is shown that a low number of photons are sufficient to classify occluded objects with the proposed method.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.579-585
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• 2016

Integral imaging combined with photon-counting detection has been researched for three-dimensional information sensing under low-light-level conditions. This paper addresses the extraction of distance information with photon-counting integral imaging. The longitudinal distance to the object is obtained utilizing photon-counting elemental images. The pixel disparity is estimated by maximizing the nonlinear correlation of photocounts. The first- and second-order statistical properties of the nonlinear correlation are theoretically derived. In the experiments, these properties are verified by varying the mean number of photocounts in the scene. The average distance is compared to that from the intensity information, showing the robustness of the proposed system even at low photocounts.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.180-187
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• 2021

In this paper, we present a computational volumetric reconstruction method for three-dimensional (3D) photon counting imaging with enhanced visual quality when low-resolution elemental images are used under photon-starved conditions. In conventional photon counting imaging with low-resolution elemental images, it may be difficult to estimate the 3D scene correctly because of a lack of scene information. In addition, the reconstructed 3D images may be blurred because volumetric computational reconstruction has an averaging effect. In contrast, with our method, the pixels of the elemental image rearrangement technique and a Bayesian approach are used as the reconstruction and estimation methods, respectively. Therefore, our method can enhance the visual quality and estimation accuracy of the reconstructed 3D images because it does not have an averaging effect and uses prior information about the 3D scene. To validate our technique, we performed optical experiments and demonstrated the reconstruction results.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.1131-1134
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• 2008

In this invited paper, numerical reconstruction and pattern recognition using integral imaging are overviewed. The computational integral imaging method reconstructs three-dimensional information at arbitrary depth-levels. Photon-counting nonlinear matched filtering combined with the computational reconstruction provides promising results for the application of low-light level recognition.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.102-107
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• 2021

In this paper, we propose a new three-dimensional (3D) photon-counting integral imaging reconstruction method using a merging reconstruction process and maximum likelihood estimation (MLE). The conventional 3D photon-counting reconstruction method extracts photons from elemental images using a Poisson random process and estimates the scene using statistical methods such as MLE. However, it can reduce the photon levels because of an average overlapping calculation. Thus, it may not visualize 3D objects in severely low light environments. In addition, it may not generate high-quality reconstructed 3D images when the number of elemental images is insufficient. To solve these problems, we propose a new 3D photon-counting merging reconstruction method using MLE. It can visualize 3D objects without photon-level loss through a proposed overlapping calculation during the reconstruction process. We confirmed the image quality of our proposed method by performing optical experiments.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.1207-1212
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• 2015

In this paper, we propose three-dimensional (3D) visualization and recognition techniques of micro-objects under photon-starved conditions using photon counting integral imaging microscopy. To capture high resolution 2D images with different perspectives in the proposed method, we use Synthetic Aperture Integral Imaging (SAII). Poisson distribution which is mathematical model of photon counting imaging system is used to extract photons from the images. To estimate 3D images with 2D photon counting images, the statistical estimation is used. Therefore, 3D images can be obtained and visualized without any damage under photon-starved conditions. In addition, 3D object recognition can be implemented using nonlinear correlation filters. To prove the usefulness of our technique, we implemented the optical experiment.