SNR study on Fourier single-pixel imaging

According to the properties of Fourier transform, Fourier single-pixel imaging uses the illumination lights with cosine distributions to obtain the Fourier spectrum of the object, and then apply the inverse Fourier transform to reconstruct the spatial information of the object. This technique does not require detector arrays, such as charge coupled device and has proven to be insensitive to distortion, which is a great improvement over traditional photography techniques. In this manuscript, we present a detailed analysis and discussion on the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of Fourier single-pixel imaging. Compared with conventional imaging whose SNR is independent of pixel number N, Fourier single-pixel imaging achieves an improved SNR which is up to N times as high as the dynamic range of detection. Furthermore, this SNR benefit is further confirmed experimentally, in cases of one dimension and two dimensions.