(Press-News.org) WASHINGTON — Capturing blur-free images of fast movements like falling water droplets or molecular interactions requires expensive ultrafast cameras that acquire millions of images per second. In a new paper, researchers report a camera that could offer a much less expensive way to achieve ultrafast imaging for a wide range of applications such as real-time monitoring of drug delivery or high-speed lidar systems for autonomous driving.
“Our camera uses a completely new method to achieve high-speed imaging,” said Jinyang Liang from the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) in Canada. “It has an imaging speed and spatial resolution similar to commercial high-speed cameras but uses off-the-shelf components that would likely cost less than a tenth of today’s ultrafast cameras, which can start at close to $100,000.”
In Optica, Optica Publishing Group’s journal for high-impact research, Liang together with collaborators from Concordia University in Canada and Meta Platforms Inc. show that their new diffraction-gated real-time ultrahigh-speed mapping (DRUM) camera can capture a dynamic event in a single exposure at 4.8 million frames per second. They demonstrate this capability by imaging the fast dynamics of femtosecond laser pulses interacting with liquid and laser ablation in biological samples.
“In the long term, I believe that DRUM photography will contribute to advances in biomedicine and automation-enabling technologies such as lidar, where faster imaging would allow more accurate sensing of hazards,” said Liang. “However, the paradigm of DRUM photography is quite generic. In theory, it can be used with any CCD and CMOS cameras without degrading their other advantages such as high sensitivity.”
Creating a better ultrafast camera
Despite a great deal of progress in ultrafast imaging, today’s methods are still expensive and complex to implement. Their performance is also limited by trade-offs between the number of frames captured in each movie and light throughput or temporal resolution. To overcome these issues, the researchers developed a new time-gating method known as time-varying optical diffraction.
Cameras use gates to control when light hits the sensor. For example, the shutter in a traditional camera is a type of gate that opens and closes once. In time-gating, the gate is opened and closed in quick succession a certain number of times before the sensor reads out the image. This captures a short high-speed movie of a scene.
By considering the space-time duality of light, Liang figured out how to accomplish time gating using light diffraction. He realized that rapidly changing the tilt angle of periodic facets on a diffraction grating, which can generate several replicas of the incident light traveling in different directions, could present a way to sweep through different spatial positions to gate out frames at different time points. These frames could then be put together to form an ultrafast movie. Turning this idea into a working camera required a multidisciplinary team that brought together expertise in areas such as physical optics, ultrahigh-speed imaging and MEMS design.
“Luckily, it is possible to accomplish this type of swept diffraction gate by using a digital micromirror device (DMD) — a common optical component in projectors — in an unconventional way,” said Liang. “DMDs are mass-produced and require no mechanical movement to produce the diffraction gate, making the system cost-efficient and stable.”
Capturing fast dynamics
The team created a DRUM camera with a sequence depth of seven frames, meaning that it captures seven frames in each short movie. After characterizing the system’s spatial and temporal resolutions, the researchers used it to record laser interactions with distilled water.
The resulting time-lapse images showed the evolution of a plasma channel and the development of a bubble in response to a pulsed laser, with the measured bubble radii matching those predicted by cavitation theory. They also imaged the bubble dynamics of a carbonated drink and captured transient interactions between an ultrashort laser pulse and a single-layer onion cell sample. “DRUM photography may even be applied to nano-surgeries and laser-based cleaning applications,” said the paper’s first author Xianglei Liu, formerly of INRS and now at Ansys.
The researchers are continuing to work on improving the performance of DRUM photography, including upping the imaging speed and sequence depth. They also want to explore capturing color information and applying the system to additional applications such as lidar.
Paper: X. Liu, P. Kilcullen, Y. Wang, B. Helfield, J. Liang, “Diffraction-gated real-time ultrahigh-speed mapping photography,”10, 9 (2023).
DOI: 10.1364/OPTICA.495041
About Optica
Optica is an open-access journal dedicated to the rapid dissemination of high-impact peer-reviewed research across the entire spectrum of optics and photonics. Published monthly by Optica Publishing Group, the Journal provides a forum for pioneering research to be swiftly accessed by the international community, whether that research is theoretical or experimental, fundamental or applied. Optica maintains a distinguished editorial board of more than 60 associate editors from around the world and is overseen by Editor-in-Chief Prem Kumar, Northwestern University, USA. For more information, visit Optica.
About Optica Publishing Group (formerly OSA)
Optica Publishing Group is a division of Optica (formerly OSA), Advancing Optics and Photonics Worldwide. It publishes the largest collection of peer-reviewed content in optics and photonics, including 18 prestigious journals, the society’s flagship member magazine, and papers from more than 835 conferences, including 6,500+ associated videos. With over 400,000 journal articles, conference papers and videos to search, discover and access, Optica Publishing Group represents the full range of research in the field from around the globe.
END
New camera offers ultrafast imaging at a fraction of the normal cost
Camera uses off-the-shelf components and is fast enough to capture highly dynamic biomedical processes or to enable high-speed lidar
2023-09-14
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Peer-led patient navigation helps minoritized patients engage in their own mental healthcare
2023-09-14
INDIANAPOLIS – Research scientists led by Johanne Eliacin, PhD, of the U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) and Regenstrief Institute, have developed PARTNER-MH, an innovative, peer-led patient navigation program to support racially and ethnically minoritized veterans seeking mental healthcare, regardless of the types of mental health services needed or their mental health diagnoses.
In two peer-reviewed published papers they report significant improvements in mental health outcomes and high participant satisfaction with the program.
PARTNER-MH, developed for VA mental ...
Enhancing neonatal health: Genomic sequencing as a primary screening tool
2023-09-14
Newborn screening (NBS) is routinely performed across the world using biochemical testing methods. Recent advancements in genetic sequencing are a potential game-changer for newborn screening, swiftly assessing a comprehensive range of monogenic disorders. Yet, the effectiveness of genetic sequencing as an alternative method for NBS has not previously been studied.
To evaluate the outcomes of applying gene panel sequencing as a first-tier newborn screening test, a recent study conducted by eight NBS centers and BGI Genomics was ...
Take the money now or later? Financial scarcity doesn’t lead to poor decision making
2023-09-14
When people feel that their resources are scarce – that they don’t have enough money or time to meet their needs – they often make decisions that favor short-term gains over long-term benefits. Because of that, researchers have argued that scarcity pushes people to make myopic, impulsive decisions. But a study published by the American Psychological Association provides support for a different, less widely held view: People experiencing scarcity make reasonable decisions based on their circumstances, and only ...
Researchers make strides in harnessing low-grade heat for efficient energy conversion
2023-09-14
A team of researchers, jointly led by Professor Hyun-Wook Lee and Professor Dong-Hwa Seo from the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), in collaboration with Professor Seok Woo Lee from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, has achieved significant breakthroughs in harnessing low-grade heat sources (<100 °C) for efficient energy conversion. Their groundbreaking work focuses on developing a highly efficient Thermally Regenerative Electrochemical Cycle (TREC) system capable of converting small temperature differences into usable energy.
Conventional energy-harvesting ...
New $50 million institute aims to use the power of math to model, predict biological processes
2023-09-14
Building a mathematics-based understanding of biology at all scales of life — from individual cells to interactions between species — is the goal of a new $50 million institute supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation in partnership with the Simons Foundation. The two organizations are each providing $25 million to launch the National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology (NITMB). The institute will bring together experts across the mathematical and biological sciences to explore research challenges related to a broad range of topics and industries, such as the environment, biomedicine and biotechnology.
The institute will be led by Northwestern University ...
Preventing ground collapse through new AI-based monitoring
2023-09-14
As severe urban overcrowding is trending worldwide many underground development projects are being carried out in metropolitan centers worldwide. South Korea has experienced problems such as aging underground facilities and inaccurate information management due to rapid urban development since the 1970s and 1980s. Accident prevention has become a major challenge since accidents in underground spaces have occurred due to various causes.
The Korean government is undertaking projects to digitize underground facilities and ground information and establish a 3D underground space information database to prevent ...
Nation’s first dual degree in medicine and AI aims to prepare the next generation of health care providers
2023-09-14
The Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) and the University College at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) are officially launching the first known program in the United States to combine medicine and artificial intelligence. A Doctor of Medicine (MD) from UT Health San Antonio and a Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence (MSAI) from UTSA will form a five-year MD/MS program enabling physicians trained in San Antonio to uniquely lead in the practical use of artificial intelligence to improve diagnostic and treatment ...
Worse results and more drop-outs when teaching is in English
2023-09-14
Using English as the language of instruction in higher education has a marked negative impact on learning outcomes when it is not the students’ first language, according to a new study from KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. When 2,000 Swedish students were divided up into English-language and Swedish-language versions of an introductory course in programming, those students who were taught in English obtained much worse results, and more dropped out of the course prematurely.
English is increasingly used as a global language of instruction in higher education, known as English Medium Instruction or ...
Lack of maternal care affects development, microbiome and health of wild bees
2023-09-14
TORONTO, Sept. 14, 2023 – Most wild bees are solitary, but one tiny species of carpenter bees fastidiously cares for and raises their offspring, an act that translates into huge benefits to the developing bee’s microbiome, development and health, found York University researchers.
Not unlike the positive affect human mothers can have on their offspring, the maternal care of these carpenter bees (Ceratina calcarata) staves off an overabundance of harmful fungi, bacteria, viruses and parasites in the earliest stage of development.
Without maternal care the pathogen load of these ...
Pollination by more than one bee species improves cherry harvest
2023-09-14
To obtain the biggest cherry harvest, trees should be pollinated by both honey bees and mason bees. A new study led by a researcher at the University of Gothenburg shows yet another benefit of biodiversity.
Like many other fruit trees, most sweet cherry cultivars depend on cross-pollination to produce their fruit. This means that there need to be several different cultivars of sweet cherry trees in an orchard for the bees to transport pollen from one to another.
“Sweet cherry trees are usually planted in alternate rows of different cultivars. In some cases, you can put different cultivars in the same row, but ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
Insulin resistance is linked to over 30 diseases – and to early death in women, study of people in the UK finds
Innovative semaglutide hydrogel could reduce diabetes shots to once a month
Weight loss could reduce the risk of severe infections in people with diabetes, UK research suggests
Long-term exposure to air pollution and a lack of green space increases the risk of hospitalization for respiratory conditions
Better cardiovascular health in early pregnancy may offset high genetic risk
Artificial intelligence method transforms gene mutation prediction in lung cancer: DeepGEM data releases at IASLC 2024 World Conference on Lung Cancer
Antibody–drug conjugate I-DXd shows clinically meaningful response in patients with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer
IASLC Global Survey on biomarker testing reveals progress and persistent barriers in lung cancer biomarker testing
Research shows pathway to developing predictive biomarkers for immune checkpoint inhibitors
Just how dangerous is Great Salt Lake dust? New research looks for clues
Maroulas appointed Associate Vice Chancellor, Director of AI Tennessee
New chickadee research finds cognitive skills impact lifespan
Cognitive behavioral therapy enhances brain circuits to relieve depression
Terasaki Institute awarded $2.3 Million grant from NIH for organ transplantation research using organs-on-a-chip technology
Atoms on the edge
Postdoc takes multipronged approach to muon detection
Mathematical proof: Five satellites needed for precise navigation
Scalable, multi-functional device lays groundwork for advanced quantum applications
Falling for financial scams? It may signal early Alzheimer’s disease
Integrating MRI and OCT for new insights into brain microstructure
Designing a normative neuroimaging library to support diagnosis of traumatic brain injury
Department of Energy announces $68 million in funding for artificial intelligence for scientific research
DOE, ORNL announce opportunity to define future of high-performance computing
Molecular simulations, supercomputing lead to energy-saving biomaterials breakthrough
Low-impact yoga and exercise found to help older women manage urinary incontinence
Genetic studies reveal new insights into cognitive impairment in schizophrenia
Researcher develops technology to provide cleaner energy and cleaner water
Expect the unexpected: nanoscale silver unveils intrinsic self-healing abilities
nTIDE September 2024 Jobs Report: Gains in employment for people with disabilities appear to level off after reducing gaps with non-disabled workers
Wiley enhances NMR Spectral Library Collection with extensive new databases
[Press-News.org] New camera offers ultrafast imaging at a fraction of the normal costCamera uses off-the-shelf components and is fast enough to capture highly dynamic biomedical processes or to enable high-speed lidar