Computational evaluation of sparse coding on off-axis electron holograms: comparison between charge-coupled device and direct-detection device cameras

The effectiveness of sparse coding for image inpainting and denoising of off-axis electron holograms was examined computationally based on hologram simulations according to considerations of two types of electron detectors, namely charge-coupled device (CCD) and direct-detection device (DDD) cameras. In this simulation, we used a simple-phase object with a phase step such as a semiconductor p-n junction and assumed that the holograms recorded by the CCD camera include shot noise, dark-current noise and read-out noise, while those recorded by the DDD camera include only shot noise. Simulated holograms with various electron doses were sparsely coded. Even though interference fringes cannot be recognized in the simulated CCD and DDD holograms when subjected to electron doses (per pixel) equal to 1 and 0.01, respectively, both the corresponding sparse-coded holograms exhibit meaningful interference fringes. We demonstrate that a combination of the DDD camera and sparse coding reduces the requisite dose used to obtain holograms to values less than one-thousandth compared with the CCD camera without image postprocessing. This combination is expected to generate lower-dose and/or higher-speed electron holography.