Super-resolved quantum ghost imaging

Abstract

Abstract Quantum ghost imaging offers many advantages over classical imaging, including low photon fluxes and non-degenerate object and image wavelengths for imaging light sensitive structures, but suffers from slow image reconstruction speeds. Image reconstruction times depend on the resolution of the required image which scale quadratically with the image resolution. Here, we propose a super-resolved imaging approach based on neural networks where we reconstruct a low resolution image, which we denoise and super-resolve to a high resolution image. To test the approach, we implemented both a generative adversarial network as well as a super-resolving autoencoder in conjunction with an experimental quantum ghost imaging setup, demonstrating its efficacy across a range of object and imaging projective mask types. We achieved super-resolving enhancement of $$4\times$$ 4× the measured resolution with a fidelity close to 90 $$\%$$ % at an acquisition time of N $$^2$$ 2 measurements, required for a complete N $$\times$$ × N pixel image solution. This significant resolution enhancement is a step closer to a common ghost imaging goal, to reconstruct images with the highest resolution and the shortest possible acquisition time.