Digital streak camera captures full-color photographs of high-speed objects

Optical Engineering article details device and innovation process

2013-08-14

(Press-News.org) LAGUNA HILLS, California, USA -- Researchers at MetroLaser, Inc., have developed a new design for a digital streak camera that captures full-color images of projectiles traveling up to 3350 m/s, which is 10 times the speed of sound. This system was designed to replace the outdated film-based streak cameras that are still in use at high-speed test tracks.

Film-based streak photography records the motion of an object as it passes in front of a camera lens, while the film moves behind a vertical slit aperture during the exposure. The result is a long, continuous composite image of the object.

However, the transition from film to digital has changed the photography industry, and the specialized film required for streak photography is no longer being manufactured. The U.S. Air Force asked Benjamin Buckner and Drew L'Esperance under a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract to design a system that could produce high-quality magazine-type images, as no existing digital technology exists that can capture images at the high speeds they require.

The new digital technology for this camera relies on a precisely controlled mirror to follow the object and freeze the image on the camera.

Buckner is the lead author of a paper describing the camera design in Optical Engineering. He explains that the galvo mirror tracks the object as it moves past the camera and directs the right portion of the object's image onto the right portion of the image sensor in order to form a complete, undistorted image.

Since the mirror is synchronized to a ballistic object, the biggest challenge is to accurately measure the object's speed, and calculate the swing of the mirror to match that speed precisely. "This has to be done in a few thousandths of a second," Buckner says.

The optical design also allows the wave of compressed air pushed along by the object (the schlieren effect) to be seen in the captured image. The camera is triggered by the motion of the object.

The digital streak camera was built to meet specifications established by operators of rocket sleds, which means that the camera is able to resolve an object 1.27 mm in size when the sled is traveling 3350 m/s, and must be able to operate outdoors in conditions of heat, cold, dust, and moisture.

The setup utilizes a commercial portrait quality digital camera and conventional photographic flash illumination. The software was designed to run efficiently on a compact, low-power computer, while maintaining a high level of mathematical accuracy.

"The real power of this approach is that you can take almost any kind of existing camera back and fit it into a rig like this to turn it into a high-speed streak camera," Buckner says.

Buckner and L'Esperance envision applications of digital streak imaging including ballistics, rocket sled imaging, and determining finishing order in high-speed races.

The full paper is available in the SPIE Digital Library: "Digital synchroballistic schlieren camera for high-speed photography of bullets and rocket sleds."

INFORMATION:

The work is supported by Eglin and Holloman AFB under U.S. Air Force Contract No. FA9201-08-C-0260.

SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics, a not-for-profit organization founded in 1955 to advance light-based technologies. The Society serves more than 235,000 constituents from approximately 155 countries, offering conferences, continuing education, books, journals, and a digital library in support of interdisciplinary information exchange, professional networking, and patent precedent. SPIE provided over $3.2 million in support of education and outreach programs in 2012.

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Children of obese mothers face risk of early death, study shows

2013-08-14

Children born to obese mothers are more likely to die early as adults than those whose mothers were a normal weight, a study has found. The offspring of obese mothers are one-third more likely to die before the age of 55, mainly as a result of heart disease, researchers found. Children born to mothers who were overweight when they became pregnant were also 10 per cent more likely to die prematurely in later life than those born to mothers of a normal weight. The study, carried out by the Universities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen, examined the health records of more ...

Children of obese mothers at greater risk of early heart death as adults

2013-08-14

Children of obese and overweight women have a higher risk of early cardiovascular death as adults, finds a study published on bmj.com today. The findings highlight the urgent need for strategies to prevent obesity in women of childbearing age and the need to assess the offspring of obese mothers for their cardiovascular risk, say the authors. Rates of maternal obesity have risen rapidly in the past two decades. In the United States, about 64% of women of reproductive age are overweight and 35% are obese, with a similar pattern in Europe. Many studies have shown a ...

How bacteria found in mouth may cause colorectal cancer

2013-08-14

Gut microbes have recently been linked to colorectal cancer, but it has not been clear whether and how they might cause tumors to form in the first place. Two studies published by Cell Press on August 14th in the journal Cell Host & Microbe reveal how gut microbes known as fusobacteria, which are found in the mouth, stimulate bad immune responses and turn on cancer growth genes to generate colorectal tumors. The findings could lead to more effective strategies for the early diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of colorectal cancer. "Fusobacteria may provide not only ...

CWRU dental researchers discover how an oral bacterium can trigger colorectal cancer

2013-08-14

Researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine have discovered how a common oral bacterium can contribute to colorectal cancer, a finding that opens promising new research avenues for the development of approaches to prevent and treat the disease. "We found this cancer is linked to an infection from [the bacterium]," said Yiping Han, professor of periodontics at the dental school and the study's lead investigator. "This discovery creates the potential for new diagnostic tools and therapies to treat and prevent the cancer." The results of ...

Stanford scientists get a handle on what made Typhoid Mary's infectious microbes tick

2013-08-14

STANFORD, Calif. — Stanford University School of Medicine scientists have shown how salmonella — a bacterial menace responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year from typhoid fever and food poisoning — manages to hide out in immune cells, altering their metabolism to its own benefit, much as someone might remodel a newly rented home to suit his own comfort. Salmonella's ability to position itself inside infected people's cells for the long haul can turn them into chronic, asymptomatic carriers who, unknown to themselves or others, spread the infectious organism ...

Growing use of MRIs leading to more invasive breast cancer surgery

2013-08-14

Heavy use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may be leading to unnecessary breast removal in older women with breast cancer, according to a study by Yale School of Medicine researchers in the current issue of Breast Cancer Research and Treatment. "These data are concerning because the long-term benefits associated with bilateral mastectomy for older women with breast cancer are unclear," said the study's lead author Cary Gross. M.D., associate professor of internal medicine at Yale School of Medicine and director of the Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy, and Effectiveness ...

New biomarker could reveal Alzheimer's disease years before onset

2013-08-14

Barcelona, Spain – August 14, 2013 – A study published today reported the identification of what may be the earliest known biomarker associated with the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD). The results suggest that this novel potential biomarker is present in cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) at least a decade before signs of dementia manifest. "If our initial findings can be replicated by other laboratories, the results will change the way we currently think about the causes of Alzheimer's disease," said Dr. Ramon Trullas, research professor at the CSIC Institute of ...

Advancing resistive memory to improve portable electronics

2013-08-14

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A team at the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering has developed a novel way to build what many see as the next generation memory storage devices for portable electronic devices including smart phones, tablets, laptops and digital cameras. The device is based on the principles of resistive memory, which can be used to create memory cells that are smaller, operate at a higher speed and offer more storage capacity than flash memory cells, the current industry standard. Terabytes, not gigbytes, will be the norm with resistive ...

6 months of fish oil reverses liver disease in children with intestinal failure, study shows

2013-08-14

Children who suffer from intestinal failure, most often caused by a shortened or dysfunctional bowel, are unable to consume food orally. Instead, a nutritional cocktail of sugar, protein and fat made from soybean oil is injected through a small tube in their vein. For these children, the intravenous nutrition serves as a bridge to bowel adaptation, a process by which the intestine recovers and improves its capacity to absorb nutrition. But the soybean oil, which provides essential fatty acids and calories, has been associated with a potentially lethal complication known ...

NTU-led research shows Burmese long-tailed macaques' ability using stone tools threatened by human activity in Thailand

2013-08-14

Human farming and the introduction of domestic dogs are posing a threat to the ability of Burmese long-tailed macaques to use stone tools. This was found in a study led by Singapore's Nanyang Technological University (NTU) carried out at Thailand's Laem Son National Park. The research team has advised Thailand's authorities that in the management of their marine national parks they should pay closer attention to macaques' use of stones as tools. Burmese long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis aurea) are a rare variety of the common long-tailed macaques of Southeast ...

Insilico Medicine to present three abstracts at the 2026 Crohn’s & Colitis Congress highlighting clinical, preclinical safety, and efficacy data for ISM5411, a novel gut-restricted PHD1/2 inhibitor fo

A cigarette compound-induced tumor microenvironment promotes sorafenib resistance in hepatocellular carcinoma via the 14-3-3η-modified tumor-associated proteome

Brain network disorders study provides insights into the role of molecular chaperones in neurodegenerative diseases

[Press-News.org] Digital streak camera captures full-color photographs of high-speed objects
Optical Engineering article details device and innovation process

Digital streak camera captures full-color photographs of high-speed objects

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: