Learn about a virtual slow-motion camera that can capture photons or light particles moving through space which may be useful in medical imaging, in industrial or scientific use or even in consumer photography
Learn about a virtual slow-motion camera that can capture photons or light particles moving through space which may be useful in medical imaging, in industrial or scientific use or even in consumer photography
Discover a laboratory camera that can photograph photons (light particles) as they move through space. The camera, which has 500 sensors and a pulsed-laser light source, captures images at a rate of one trillion frames per second.
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Transcript
RAMESH RASKAR: We have built a virtual slow motion camera where we can see photons or light particles moving through space. Now, you have seen Dr. Jordan's pictures of a bullet through an apple. But photons travel about a million times faster than bullets. So our camera can see these photons or bullets of light traveling through space.
ANDREAS VELTEN: We use a very regular pulse light source and a camera that is not one camera but an array of 500 sensors, each triggered at a trillionth of a second delay. So even though each of our sensors is slow, we can still capture a fast movie.
I'm standing next to our laboratory set up here. This is our camera. Objective is in the front here. The body of the camera is much larger than what you would expect from a regular camera like the one over here. Our light source is a titanium sapphire laser that's over here. And it's a beam of very, very short pulses. And those pulses are then directed to the scene with these mirrors.
Now, our camera only sees one dimension so it makes a fast movie but it makes a fast movie of one line of the scene only. And in order to fix that, we have these two mirrors here. We look at the scene via these two mirrors, and then we rotate this upper mirror here, we actually see different lines of the scene.
So what's happening is the camera keeps taking images and we very slowly rotate this mirror to scan our field of view across the entire scene. And because all of our parts look the same, we [INAUDIBLE] go and combine all these images that we took to get one complete movie of the scene.
RASKAR: Such a camera may be useful in medical imaging, in industrial or scientific use, and the future even for consumer photography. In medical imaging, now we can do ultrasound with light because we can analyze how light will scatter volumetrically inside the body. In industrial imaging, one can use the scattered light to analyze defects in materials. And in consumer photography, we're always fascinated with creating lighting effects that appear to come from very sophisticated light sources. But because we can watch photons seemingly moving through the space, we can analyze the transport, the movement, of these photons and create new photographs as if we had created those expensive light sources in a studio.
ANDREAS VELTEN: We use a very regular pulse light source and a camera that is not one camera but an array of 500 sensors, each triggered at a trillionth of a second delay. So even though each of our sensors is slow, we can still capture a fast movie.
I'm standing next to our laboratory set up here. This is our camera. Objective is in the front here. The body of the camera is much larger than what you would expect from a regular camera like the one over here. Our light source is a titanium sapphire laser that's over here. And it's a beam of very, very short pulses. And those pulses are then directed to the scene with these mirrors.
Now, our camera only sees one dimension so it makes a fast movie but it makes a fast movie of one line of the scene only. And in order to fix that, we have these two mirrors here. We look at the scene via these two mirrors, and then we rotate this upper mirror here, we actually see different lines of the scene.
So what's happening is the camera keeps taking images and we very slowly rotate this mirror to scan our field of view across the entire scene. And because all of our parts look the same, we [INAUDIBLE] go and combine all these images that we took to get one complete movie of the scene.
RASKAR: Such a camera may be useful in medical imaging, in industrial or scientific use, and the future even for consumer photography. In medical imaging, now we can do ultrasound with light because we can analyze how light will scatter volumetrically inside the body. In industrial imaging, one can use the scattered light to analyze defects in materials. And in consumer photography, we're always fascinated with creating lighting effects that appear to come from very sophisticated light sources. But because we can watch photons seemingly moving through the space, we can analyze the transport, the movement, of these photons and create new photographs as if we had created those expensive light sources in a studio.