Open AccessCompressed ultrafast tomographic imaging by passive spatiotemporal projections
Author(s) -
Yingming Lai,
Ruibo Shang,
C. Y. Côté,
Xianglei Liu,
Antoine Laramée,
François Légaré,
Geoffrey P. Luke,
Jinyang Liang
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
optics letters/optics index
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.524
H-Index - 272
eISSN - 1071-2763
pISSN - 0146-9592
DOI - 10.1364/ol.420737
Subject(s) - streak , streak camera , optics , ultrashort pulse , compressed sensing , tomographic reconstruction , temporal resolution , iterative reconstruction , computer vision , image resolution , physics , projection (relational algebra) , data acquisition , computer science , artificial intelligence , tomography , laser , algorithm , operating system
Existing streak-camera-based two-dimensional (2D) ultrafast imaging techniques are limited by long acquisition time, the trade-off between spatial and temporal resolutions, and a reduced field of view. They also require additional components, customization, or active illumination. Here we develop compressed ultrafast tomographic imaging (CUTI), which passively records 2D transient events with a standard streak camera. By grafting the concept of computed tomography to the spatiotemporal domain, the operations of temporal shearing and spatiotemporal integration in a streak camera's data acquisition can be equivalently expressed as the spatiotemporal projection of an ( x , y , t ) datacube from a certain angle. Aided by a new, to the best of our knowledge, compressed-sensing reconstruction algorithm, the 2D transient event can be accurately recovered in a few measurements. CUTI is exhibited as a new imaging mode universally adaptable to most streak cameras. Implemented in an image-converter streak camera, CUTI captures the sequential arrival of two spatially modulated ultrashort ultraviolet laser pulses at 0.5 trillion frames per second. Applied to a rotating-mirror streak camera, CUTI records an amination of fast-bouncing balls at 5,000 frames per second.