Abstract
Quanta Image Sensor (QIS) is a single-photon detector designed for extremely low light imaging conditions. Majority of the existing QIS prototypes are monochrome based on single-photon avalanche diodes (SPAD). Color imaging has not been demonstrated with single-photon detectors due to the intrinsic difficulty of shrinking the pixel size and increasing the spatial resolution while maintaining acceptable intra-pixel cross-talk. In this paper, we present image reconstruction of the first color QIS with a resolution of $1024 \times 1024$ pixels, supporting both single-bit and multi-bit photon counting capability. Our color image reconstruction is enabled by a customized joint demosaicing-denoising algorithm, leveraging truncated Poisson statistics and variance stabilizing transforms. Experimental results of the new sensor and algorithm demonstrate superior color imaging performance for very low-light conditions with a mean exposure of as low as a few photons per pixel.
Abstract (translated)
量子图像传感器（QIS）是一种单光子探测器，设计用于极低光成像条件。现有的大多数QIS原型是基于单光子雪崩二极管（SPAD）的单色。由于在保持可接受的像素内串扰的同时，缩小像素尺寸和提高空间分辨率的固有困难，单光子探测器尚未证明彩色成像。在本文中，我们提出了第一颜色qi的图像重建，分辨率为1024美元乘以1024美元，同时支持单位和多位光子计数功能。我们的彩色图像重建是由一个定制的联合去噪算法，利用截断泊松统计和方差稳定变换。新传感器和算法的实验结果表明，在低光照条件下，每个像素的平均曝光量低至几个光子，具有优异的彩色成像性能。
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.09036
