Direct inversion of incomplete visibility samples in VLBI (Very Large Baseline Interferometry) radio telescopes produces images with convolutive artifacts. Since proper analysis and interpretations of astronomical radio sources require a non-distorted image, and because filling all of sampling points in the uv-plane is an impossible task, image deconvolution has been one of central issues in the VLBI imaging. Up to now, the most widely used deconvolution algorithms are based on least-squares-optimization and maximum entropy method. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm that is based on an emerging paradigm called compressive sensing (CS). Under the sparsity condition, CS capable to exactly reconstructs a signal or an image, using only a few number of random samples. We show that CS is well-suited with the VLBI imaging problem and demonstrate that the proposed method is capable to reconstruct a simulated image of radio galaxy from its incomplete visibility samples taken from elliptical trajectories in the uv-plane. The effectiveness of the proposed method is also demonstrated with an actual VLBI measured data of 3C459 asymmetric radio-galaxy observed by the VLA (Very Large Array).
@article{arxiv.0904.0508,
title = {Deconvolution of VLBI Images Based on Compressive Sensing},
author = {Andriyan Bayu Suksmono},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0904.0508},
year = {2009}
}