MIT Technology Review August 31, 2018 Computational ghost imaging technique relies on clever algorithms to crunch the seemingly random data that a single pixel appears to gather. Researchers in the UK have demonstrated that the computational integration can be performed directly with the human eye. They used this human ghost imaging technique to evaluate the temporal response of the eye and establish the image persistence time to be around 20 ms followed by a further 20 ms exponential decay. These persistence times agree with previous studies but can now potentially be extended to include a more precise characterisation of visual […]
Category Archives: Imaging technology
Novel optics for ultrafast cameras creates new possibilities for imaging
MIT News August 13, 2018 Researchers at MIT exploited time as an extra dimension in the optical design and demonstrated that by folding large spaces in time using time-resolved cavities, one can enable new camera capabilities without losing the targeted information. They demonstrated lens tube compression by an order of magnitude, together with ultrafast multi-zoom imaging and ultrafast multispectral imaging by time-folding the optical path at different regions of the imaging optics. They expect this technique to have a broad impact on time-resolved imaging and depth-sensing optics… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Learning to See in the Dark
ArXiv May 1, 2018 To support the development of learning-based pipelines for low-light image processing, a team of researchers in the US (University of Illinois, industry) has developed a pipeline for processing low-light images, based on end-to-end training of a fully-convolutional network. The network operates directly on raw sensor data and replaces much of the traditional image processing pipeline. They report promising results on the new dataset, analyze factors that affect performance, and highlight opportunities for future work. The results are shown in the supplementary video …read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Magnetized plasmas that twist light can produce powerful microscopes and more
Phys.org May 7, 2018 An optical vortex is a light wave with a twisting wavefront around its propagation axis and null intensity in the beam center. Accessible intensity of optical vortices have been limited to material ionization threshold which might be removed by using the plasma medium. Researchers at Princeton University propose the design of suitably magnetized plasmas which, functioning as a q-plate, leads to a direct conversion from a high-intensity Gaussian beam into a twisted beam. A circularly polarized laser beam in the plasma accumulates an azimuthal-angle-dependent phase shift and hence forms a twisting wavefront. Extremely high-resolution images are […]
New algorithm can create movies from just a few snippets of text
Science Magazine February 23, 2018 Researchers in Belgium have developed a machine learning a neural network algorithm. During training, software assesses its performance after each attempt, and feedback circulates through the millions of network connections to refine future computations. The first stage uses the text to create a “gist” of the video, the second stage takes both the gist and the text and produces a short video. During training, a second network acts as a “discriminator.” As it gets better, it becomes a harsher critic, and its feedback sets a higher bar for the generator network. Currently, the videos are […]
Engineers invent tiny vision processing chip for ultra-small smart vision systems and IoT applications
Physorg January 19, 2018 In energy-quality scaling, the trade-off between energy consumption and quality in the extraction of features is adjusted. It mimics the dynamic change in the level of attention with which humans observe the visual scene, processing it with different levels of detail and quality depending on the task at hand. Researchers in Singapore used this concept to develop EQSCALE, a microchip that can perform continuous feature extraction at 0.2 milliwatts. This translates into a major advancement in the level of miniaturization for smart vision systems. It paves the way for cost-effective IoT applications… read more.