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Confocal microscopy, a critical advancement in optical imaging, is widely applied because of its excellent anti-noise ability. However, it has low imaging efficiency and can cause phototoxicity. Optical-sectioning structured illumination microscopy (OS-SIM) can overcome the limitations of confocal microscopy but still face challenges in imaging depth and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). We introduce the concept of confocal imaging into OS-SIM and propose confocal structured illumination microscopy (CSIM) to enhance the imaging performance of OS-SIM. CSIM exploits the principle of dual photography to reconstruct a dual image from each pixel of the camera. The reconstructed dual image is equivalent to the image obtained by using the spatial light modulator (SLM) as a virtual camera, enabling the separation of the conjugate and non-conjugate signals recorded by the camera pixel. We can reject the non-conjugate signals by extracting the conjugate signal from each dual image to reconstruct a confocal image when establishing the conjugate relationship between the camera and the SLM. We have constructed the theoretical framework of CSIM. Optical-sectioning experimental results demonstrate that CSIM can reconstruct images with superior SNR and greater imaging depth compared with existing OS-SIM. CSIM is expected to expand the application scope of OS-SIM.

Fourier single-pixel imaging (FSI) is a branch of single-pixel imaging techniques. It uses Fourier basis patterns as structured patterns for spatial information acquisition in the Fourier domain. However, the spatial resolution of the image reconstructed by FSI mainly depends on the number of Fourier coefficients sampled. The reconstruction of a high-resolution image typically requires a number of Fourier coefficients to be sampled, and therefore takes a long data acquisition time. Here we propose a new sampling strategy for FSI. It allows FSI to reconstruct a clear and sharp image with a reduced number of measurements. The core of the proposed sampling strategy is to perform a variable density sampling in the Fourier space and, more importantly, the density with respect to the importance of Fourier coefficients is subject to a one-dimensional Gaussian function. Combined with compressive sensing, the proposed sampling strategy enables better reconstruction quality than conventional sampling strategies, especially when the sampling ratio is low. We experimentally demonstrate compressive FSI combined with the proposed sampling strategy is able to reconstruct a sharp and clear image of 256-by-256 pixels with a sampling ratio of 10%. The proposed method enables fast single-pixel imaging and provides a new approach for efficient spatial information acquisition.

Objects classification generally relies on image acquisition and analysis. Real-time classification of high-speed moving objects is challenging, as both high temporal resolution in image acquisition and low computational complexity in objects classification algorithms are required. Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate an approach for real-time moving objects classification without image acquisition. As objects classification algorithms rely on the feature information of objects, we propose to use spatial light modulation to acquire the feature information directly rather than performing image acquisition followed by features extraction. A convolutional neural network is designed and trained to learn the spatial features of the target objects. The trained network can generate structured patterns for spatial light modulation. Using the resulting structured patterns for spatial light modulation, the feature information of target objects can be compressively encoded into a short light intensity sequence. The resulting one-dimensional signal is collected by a single-pixel detector and fed to the convolutional neural network for objects classification. As experimentally demonstrated, the proposed approach can achieve accurate and real-time classification of fast moving objects. The proposed method has potential applications in the fields where fast moving objects classification in real time and for long duration is required.

A distortion calibration method for wide-angle lens is proposed based on fringe-pattern phase analysis. Firstly, according to the experimental result of the radial distortion of the image not related to the recording depth of field, but depending on the field of view angle of the wide-angle lens imaging system, two-dimensional image distortion calibration is need to be considered. Four standard sinusoidal fringe-patterns with phase shift step of , which are used as calibration templates, are shown on a Liquid Crystal Display screen, and captured by the wide-angle lens imaging system. A four-step phase-shifting method is employed to obtain the radial phase distribution of the distorted fringe-pattern. Wavelet analysis is applied for the analysis of the instantaneous frequency to show the fundamental frequency of the fringe-pattern in the central region being unchanged. Performing numerical calculation by the central 9 points of the central row of the fringe-pattern, we can get the undistorted radial phase distribution, so, the radial modulated phase is computed. Finally, the radial distortion distribution is determined according to the radial modulated phase. By employing a bilinear interpolation algorithm, the wide-angle lens image calibration is achieved. There is no need to establish any kind of image distortion model for the proposed method. There is no projecting system in the experimental apparatus, which avoids projection shadow problems, and no need to align with the center of the template for distortion measurement for the proposed method. Theoretical description, numerical simulation and experimental results show that the proposed method is simple, automatic and effective.

Digital two-dimensional (2D) spatial sampling devices (such as charge-coupled device) have been widely used in various imaging systems, especially in computational imaging systems. However, the undersampling of digital sampling devices is a problem that limits the resolution of the acquired images. In this study, we present a synthetic sampling imaging (SSI) concept to solve the undersampling problem. It combines the structured illumination system and conventional 2D image detection system to simultaneously sample the specimen from the illumination and the detection sides. Then, we synthesize the illumination sampling rate and the detection sampling rate to reconstruct a high sampling rate image. The concept of the proposed SSI is demonstrated by an example of microscopy. Experimental results confirm that the proposed method can double the sampling resolution of the microscope. The synthetic sampling scheme, where the sampling task is shared by the illumination and detection sides, provides insight for resolving the undersampling problem of the digital imaging system.

Single-pixel imaging is an innovative imaging scheme and has received increasing attentions in recent years. It is applicable to imaging at non-visible wavelengths and imaging under low light conditions. However, single-pixel imaging has once encountered problems of low reconstruction quality and long data-acquisition time. This situation has been changed thanks to the developments of Hadamard single-pixel imaging (HSI) and Fourier single-pixel imaging (FSI). Both techniques are able to achieve high-quality and efficient imaging, remarkably improving the applicability of single-pixel imaging scheme. In this paper, we compare the performances of HSI and FSI with theoretical analysis and experiments. The results show that FSI is more efficient than HSI while HSI is more noise-robust than FSI. Our work may provide a guideline for researchers to choose suitable single-pixel imaging technique for their applications.

We report the development of a multichannel microscopy for whole-slide multiplane, multispectral, and phase imaging. We use trinocular heads to split the beam path into 6 independent channels and employ a camera array for parallel data acquisition, achieving a maximum data throughput of ~1 gigapixel per second. To perform single-frame rapid autofocusing, we place two near-infrared LEDs at the back focal plane of the condenser lens to illuminate the sample from two different incident angles. A hot mirror is used to direct the near-infrared light to an autofocusing camera. For multiplane whole slide imaging (WSI), we acquire 6 different focal planes of a thick specimen simultaneously. For multispectral WSI, we relay the 6 independent image planes to the same focal position and simultaneously acquire information at 6 spectral bands. For whole-slide phase imaging, we acquire images at 3 focal positions simultaneously and use the transport-of-intensity equation to recover the phase information. We also provide an open-source design to further increase the number of channels from 6 to 15. The reported platform provides a simple solution for multiplexed fluorescence imaging and multimodal WSI. Acquiring an instant focal stack without z-scanning may also enable fast 3D dynamic tracking of various biological samples., Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures

Fourier single-pixel imaging (FSI) has proven capable of reconstructing high-quality two-dimensional and three-dimensional images. The utilization of the sparsity of natural images in Fourier domain allows high-resolution images to be reconstructed from far fewer measurements than effective image pixels. However, applying original FSI in digital micro-mirror device (DMD) based high-speed imaging system turns out to be challenging, because the original FSI uses grayscale Fourier basis patterns for illumination while DMDs generate grayscale patterns at a relatively low rate. DMDs are a binary device which can only generate a black-and-white pattern at each instance. In this paper, we adopt binary Fourier patterns for illumination to achieve DMD-based high-speed single-pixel imaging. Binary Fourier patterns are generated by upsampling and then applying error diffusion based dithering to the grayscale patterns. Experiments demonstrate the proposed technique able to achieve static imaging with high quality and dynamic imaging in real time. The proposed technique potentially allows high-quality and high-speed imaging over broad wavebands.