AUTHORS:

Sun R., Kuang J. , Ding Y., Cheng J., Zhang J., Wang Y., Buczynski R. and Liu W.

ABSTRACT:

Existing single-photon computational imaging systems always combine single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD)/photomultiplier tube (PMT) and time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC) together to collect the signals for imaging. However, the high equipment complexity and cost limit the wide applications of single-photon computational imaging systems. To overcome this problem, in this paper we propose to employ multi-pixel photon counter (MPPC) as the signal receiver to simplify the system. Due to the linearity of the output amplitude of MPPC, the number of received photons can be directly quantized; thus, the TCSPC is not necessary in our proposed imaging system. Experimental results show that the proposed system could obtain the 256 × 256 pixels images through 2000 measurements; the photons per pixel could be reduced to about 0.1.

Photonics, 2025, vol. 12(6), art. 542, doi: 10.3390/photonics12060542