A team led by an Indian-origin engineer has built a camera prototype that can capture a detailed micron-resolution image from a distance and does that without using a long lens.<\/p>\n
\nThe prototype built and tested by engineers at US-based Rice and Northwestern universities uses a laser and techniques borrowed from holography, microscopy and “Matrix”-style bullet time.<\/p>\n
It reads a spot illuminated by a laser and captures the “speckle” pattern with a camera sensor.<\/p>\n
Raw data from dozens of camera positions is fed to a computer programme that interprets it and constructs a high-resolution image.<\/p>\n
The system known as SAVI — “Synthetic Apertures for long-range, subdiffraction-limited Visible Imaging” — only works with coherent illumination sources such as lasers.<\/p>\n
“Today, the technology can be applied only to coherent (laser) light,” said Ashok Veeraraghavan, a Rice University Assistant Professor of electrical and computer engineering, in a statement.<\/p>\n
“That means you cannot apply these techniques to take pictures outdoors and improve resolution for sunlit images — as yet. Our hope is that one day, maybe a decade from now, we will have that ability,” he added.<\/p>\n
The technology is the subject of an open-access paper in Science Advances.<\/p>\n
Labs led by Veeraraghavan tested the device that compares interference patterns between multiple speckled images.<\/p>\n
Veeraraghavan explained the speckles serve as reference beams and essentially replace one of the two beams used to create holograms.<\/p>\n
When a laser illuminates a rough surface, the viewer sees grain-like speckles in the dot. That’s because some of the returning light scattered from points on the surface has farther to go and throws the collective wave out of phase.<\/p>\n
SAVI’s “synthetic aperture” sidesteps the problem by replacing a long lens with a computer programme that resolves the speckle data into an image.<\/p>\n
“You can capture interference patterns from a fair distance. How far depends on how strong the laser is and how far away you can illuminate,” Veeraraghavan added.\u2014IANS<\/p>\n
Image: Rice University<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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