Terahertz imaging is used in many fields, such as non-destructive material testing for quality assurance and monitoring during ongoing production or through random sampling in a laboratory setting; in security technology for screening individuals or inspecting cargo; in medicine; and so on.

The department uses active 3D imaging systemsfor research, which consist of both a transmitter and a detector that scan a sample in a raster pattern in two dimensions, recording a depth profile at each position, as well as systems with multiple transmitters and detectors for parallel acquisition. The raster scan requires long measurement times. If shorter measurement times are required—for example, for in-line quality assurance during a production process—these can only be achieved using systems with multiple transmitters and detectors, along with the resulting parallelization of data acquisition and numerical or synthetic image reconstruction.

The group has extensive experience in the design, development, construction, and demonstration of these imaging systems.

The research focuses on the design of the imaging geometry, such as sparse array MIMO design, parallel simultaneous real-time signal acquisition and signal processing of THz data, as well as 3D synthetic image reconstruction and its optimization. To enable the most cost-effective implementation of terahertz imaging systems in the future, alternatives to conventional terahertz sources and receivers are being evaluated. To this end, technologies based on SiGe and III-V semiconductors are being investigated.