Carbon Nanotube-Based Infrared Camera Using Compressive Sensing

This chapter introduces an infrared (IR) imaging system using a carbon nanotubes (CNT)-based single-pixel IR camera. IR detection is very popular in community and homeland security. The traditional IR detector has drawbacks such as the need for a cooling system or low resolution. CNT is a natural 1D material for serving as the sensing cell of IR detectors. With the help of this special type of CNT-based photodetector, a single-pixel IR imaging system has been developed. In this system, the data sampling process is quite different from that for traditional detectors or cameras. Compressive sensing is used for compressed data sampling and reconstruction of images. It has realized the dream of a camera with only one photodetector. Theoretical analysis shows this CNT-based single-pixel IR camera can sense the data and reconstruct the observed IR image. In addition, a couple of experiments were set up, with the results wholly supporting the compressive sensing theory. Although this CNT-based IR camera has many advantages such as cooling-free working environment, high resolution, and less-measurement demand, there are still some restrictions for the further development. The dynamic range is not sufficiently large to support high-resolution imaging. The higher the resolution, the bigger the dynamic range that is needed, as well as a longer time for image reconstruction. Moreover, a high performance A/D converter is also needed for providing increased gray or color scale of recovered images. © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.