Influence of turbid media at different locations in computational ghost imaging

In traditional direct imaging a scattering medium between the object and detection system will severely degrade the image quality. Computational correlation imaging (GI) has a unique advantage in that the effect of the light scattering can be greatly reduced. We present an analysis of computational correlation imaging and traditional direct imaging (TDI) with a turbid medium in various locations in the beam paths. It is found that a scattering medium in the illumination path will decrease the reconstructed imaging quality, while if it is only in the detection path it has almost no effect. Experimental results with a scattering medium in both the illumination and detection paths show an improved contrast-to-noise ratio of 2.98 compared with 2.72 for conventional direct imaging. These results are important for imaging objects embedded in media such as fog, smoke and cloud.