%0 Journal Article
%T Imaging with a small number of photons
%A Peter A. Morris
%A Reuben S. Aspden
%A Jessica Bell
%A Robert W. Boyd
%A Miles J. Padgett
%J Physics
%D 2014
%I arXiv
%R 10.1038/ncomms6913
%X Low-light-level imaging techniques have application in many diverse fields, ranging from biological sciences to security. We demonstrate a single-photon imaging system based on a time-gated inten- sified CCD (ICCD) camera in which the image of an object can be inferred from very few detected photons. We show that a ghost-imaging configuration, where the image is obtained from photons that have never interacted with the object, is a useful approach for obtaining images with high signal-to-noise ratios. The use of heralded single-photons ensures that the background counts can be virtually eliminated from the recorded images. By applying techniques of compressed sensing and associated image reconstruction, we obtain high-quality images of the object from raw data comprised of fewer than one detected photon per image pixel.
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1408.6381v1