Three-Dimensional Imaging Through Scattering Media by Improving Signal-to-Noise Ratio of Point Spread Function Using Cumulative Average

Optical three-dimensional (3D) imaging has been widely applied in fields such as medical diagnosis, remote sensing, and artificial intelligence. However, in the scattering environment, the wavefront phase of incident light is severely disturbed, which results in deteriorated performance or even failure of traditional optical 3D imaging. Moreover, the studies of imaging through scattering media mainly use expensive scientific cameras for data acquisition. Therefore, we propose a low-cost 3D imaging method through scattering media based on a common industrial camera for data acquisition. To improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the images collected by the common industrial camera, we conduct multiple rounds of accumulative averages on the point light source speckles representing point spread function of the proposed imaging system to obtain a point spread function with an SNR as high as that by scientific cameras. Then, the deconvolution of the point spread function with the structured light speckle obtained by a single exposure is carried out to produce the deformed fringe pattern modulated by the object shape. Finally, the 3D information of the object is recovered by Fourier transform profilometry. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method can achieve an imaging effect comparable to that by scientific cameras, which provides a feasible and low-cost solution for 3D imaging through scattering media.