Super-resolution image reconstruction of a neutron thick pinhole imaging system using image denoiser prior based on half quadratic splitting method

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Thick pinhole imaging system is a powerful tool to diagnose intense pulsed radiation sources. However, high spatial resolution of a thick pinhole imaging system cannot be achieved due to the limitation of field of view (FOV) and detection efficiency. In this paper, we propose a novel super-resolution image reconstruction algorithm to improve the spatial resolution of a practical thick pinhole imaging system designed for 14.1 MeV neutrons with 100 mm FOV. Point spread function (PSF) of the imaging system is obtained through complete simulation methods, indicating that the spatial resolution of the imaging system is about 500 μ m. A 4 × super-resolution image reconstruction algorithm using image denoiser as implicit image prior, named image denoiser prior, based on half quadratic splitting (HQS) method is firstly applied to restore more details of neutron sources. The results show that the proposed algorithm performs better than the Richardson-Lucy (RL) algorithm with fewer artifacts and sharper boundaries in reconstructed images. Notably, at a low noise level, the proposed algorithm can surpass the Nyquist sampling limit of 200 μ m, which is determined by the equivalent camera pixel size, to achieve a spatial resolution of 150 μ m.