Compressed sensing for rapid IR imaging

This paper proposes a novel spinning disk approach, aiming to achieve video rate compressive imaging at infrared (IR) and terahertz (THz) frequencies. This novel disk uses a 20-cm-diameter circular stainless steel disk with a number of chemically etched 2-mm diameter holes as a spatial light modulator (SLM). We demonstrate that this mechanical SLM is well suited for imaging at both optical and THz frequencies. The achieved spatial resolution is better than 2 mm using the spinning disk where the hole diameter is 2 mm. Based on these results, a video rate compressed IR imaging experiment is performed. 243 images of 96 x 96 pixels are obtained for a moving sample in 25 seconds using a single emitter and receiver pair, demonstrating the viability of realizing video rate IR imaging based on this system.