A new method by steering kernel-based Richardson–Lucy algorithm for neutron imaging restoration

Motivated by industrial applications, neutron radiography has become a powerful tool for non-destructive investigation techniques. However, resulted from a combined effect of neutron flux, collimated beam, limited spatial resolution of detector and scattering, etc., the images made with neutrons are degraded severely by blur and noise. For dealing with it, by integrating steering kernel regression into Richardson–Lucy approach, we present a novel restoration method in this paper, which is capable of suppressing noise while restoring details of the blurred imaging result efficiently. Experimental results show that compared with the other methods, the proposed method can improve the restoration quality both visually and quantitatively.