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Express"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,5]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>To address the bottlenecks of low optical efficiency and uneven illumination inherent to single-photon array LiDAR systems, this paper proposes a joint imaging framework combining freeform light field shaping via an orthogonal bidirectional iterative algorithm and total-variation (TV) regularized image reconstruction. The core optical contribution lies in a freeform lens design strategy based on orthogonal bidirectional iteration, which establishes a precise energy mapping between incident Gaussian beams and uniform lattice light fields matching GM-APD pixel layouts. This refractive reshaping converts raw Gaussian radiation into flat-top spot arrays with homogenized energy distribution. Numerical simulations verify that the proposed freeform modulation achieves an optical energy utilization of 89.1% and a light uniformity of 96.5%, fundamentally resolving the tradeoff between central pixel saturation and peripheral detection blind zones in array receivers. For photon-sparse, noise-contaminated raw echo data, a reconstruction workflow integrating maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) and conventional TV regularization is adopted to suppress stochastic noise while preserving sharp object geometric edges. Nighttime field experiments targeting a scene at 22.4\u2005m demonstrate that the mean absolute error (MAE) of depth reconstruction is reduced from 2.2373\u2005m under unoptimized flood illumination to 0.3176\u2005m with our freeform lattice illumination. The presented scheme fulfills the large field-of-view (FOV) requirement of array-based single-photon detection and yields remarkable imaging improvements under constraints of limited laser output power and compact optical packaging. This work delivers a feasible optical route for high-efficiency, long-range single-photon 3D imaging LiDAR.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1364\/oe.606003","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,8]],"date-time":"2026-09-08T06:00:09Z","timestamp":1788847209000},"page":"37320","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1364\/crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Enhancing the imaging performance of single-photon array detection through freeform-surface-based light field modulation"],"prefix":"10.1364","volume":"34","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0003-7043-1738","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Weihao","family":"Shen","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/034t30j35","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Optical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences"},{"name":"University of Chinese Academy of Sciences"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Zhiyuan","family":"Zhao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/034t30j35","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Optical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences"},{"name":"University of Chinese Academy of Sciences"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Haotong","family":"Ma","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/034t30j35","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Optical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences"},{"name":"University of Chinese Academy of Sciences"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Shengyu","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/034t30j35","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Optical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences"},{"name":"University of Chinese Academy of Sciences"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Wuqiang","family":"Xu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/034t30j35","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"University of Chinese Academy of Sciences"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yingben","family":"Song","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/034t30j35","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Optical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences"},{"name":"University of Chinese Academy of Sciences"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yanda","family":"Gu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/034t30j35","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Optical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences"},{"name":"University of Chinese Academy of Sciences"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Hu","family":"Yang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/034t30j35","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Optical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences"},{"name":"University of Chinese Academy of Sciences"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"285","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,23]]},"reference":[{"key":"oe-34-20-37320-R1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1006","DOI":"10.1109\/JSTQE.2007.902850","type":"journal-article","volume":"13","author":"Buller","year":"2007","journal-title":"IEEE J. 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