Improvements in terahertz imaging using plasmonic spatial beam modulators

There has been a lot of interest in developing high-performance terahertz imaging systems which have valuable applications in surveillance, security screening, medical tomography and nondestructive inspection of various pharmaceutical, agricultural, and industrial products. Conventional terahertz imaging systems based on mechanical scanning of the imaging beam, object or the detector suffer from significantly low acquisition speeds. Additionally, realtime terahertz imaging systems based on two dimensional arrays of THz sources and detectors tend to have lower sensitivity, higher complexity and higher operational cost.