GPU accelerated parallel FFT processing for Fourier transform hyperspectral imaging

Sequentially processing massive 1D fast Fourier transformations (FFT) on raw interferograms using a CPU has limited the speed of conventional Fourier transform imaging spectrometers (FTIS). This paper reports the implementation of highly paralleled FFT computation using a low-end graphics processing unit (GPU) device for acceleration of this process. Comparison experiment results have demonstrated ∼10-30 times acceleration improvement using GPU-based parallel processing over conventional CPU-based serial processing upon the input data with same sizes: GPU processing time of only 630 and 173 ms of datacubes with 512 × 512 × 1024 and 64 × 64 × 16 k pixels, respectively, has presented its potential for online and even real-time FTIS raw data processing. The addition of a cheap GPU device into any FTIS system involves no optical modifications, so it is a highly cost-effective technique for temporal resolution enhancement of FTIS-based hyperspectral imaging applications.