Single-Pixel Fiber Bundle Imaging for Specular Highlight Removal

Specular highlight reflection, created by sharp reflections within a conical region described through the reflection coefficient, can seriously interfere with image reconstruction quality, especially in fiber bundle imaging. Existing solutions often rely on complex optical lens designs to minimize highly reflective interference or high data-volume image post-processing algorithms to reduce image highlight areas. This paper demonstrates a single-pixel fiber bundle imaging method to directly reconstruct target features through simple optical design and no image post-processing. The method verifies the removal of highlight reflection of overall image features and detail information by the Fourier single-pixel imaging (FSI) and the Hadamard single-pixel imaging (HSI), respectively. At the same time, for matte and brushed materials with different reflectivities, SPI allows the reconstruction of images (64 × 64) far below the camera pixels (2048 × 3072) and with higher image quality than the camera. This paper provides new perspectives for achieving highlight interference-free and low data throughput in fiber bundle imaging, which has potential in many endoscope applications.