Fast Terahertz Coded-Aperture Imaging Based on Convolutional Neural Network

Terahertz coded-aperture imaging (TCAI) has many advantages such as forward-looking imaging, staring imaging and low cost and so forth. However, it is difficult to resolve the target under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the imaging process is time-consuming. Here, we provide an efficient solution to tackle this problem. A convolution neural network (CNN) is leveraged to develop an off-line end to end imaging network whose structure is highly parallel and free of iterations. And it can just act as a general and powerful mapping function. Once the network is well trained and adopted for TCAI signal processing, the target of interest can be recovered immediately from echo signal. Also, the method to generate training data is shown, and we find that the imaging network trained with simulation data is of good robustness against noise and model errors. The feasibility of the proposed approach is verified by simulation experiments and the results show that it has a competitive performance with the state-of-the-art algorithms.