Scanless optical feedback imaging principle by single-pixel compressed sensing

Optical feedback in lasers is being used for unconventional imaging of fluid dynamics, pressure fields, material properties, and free-carrier distribution, especially in spectral regions where two-dimensional detectors are not yet available. As this technique requires scanning the laser spot across the target, the resulting image contrast is often hampered by the speckle effect. Compressed sensing is becoming a workhorse technique for signal analysis, allowing the reconstruction of complex images from a relatively small number of integrated (single-pixel) measurements, and is being efficiently adapted to a number of single-pixel detector cameras. We applied compressed sensing algorithms to the inherently single-pixel optical feedback in a semiconductor diode laser, demonstrating for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, scanless and detectorless speckle-free imaging of a simple binary object.