Compressive imaging through a multimode fiber

Abstract

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a new concept of endo-microscopy: compressive multimode (MM) fiber imaging. We show that the speckle patterns generated in a MM fiber represent an excellent basis for compressive sensing. We demonstrate high-resolution compressive imaging through a fiber probe with the total number of measurements 20 times less than what is required for the standard raster scanning approach to endo-microscopy. Moreover, we show that the inherent optical sectioning of a MM fiber can help to overcome the main problem of compressive sensing and can be used for the imaging of bulk structures. Compressive MM fiber imaging does not require complex wavefront shaping and significantly increases the pre-calibration and imaging speed, creating a new approach to endo-microscopy.