Researchers developed the world's fastest receive-only 2D camera, which can capture an impressive 100 billion frames per second.
The camera is significantly faster than any existing receive-only devices, which are limited to on-chip storage and electronic readout speeds of 10 million frames per second, Washington University in St. Louis reported.
Using a new technique called compressed ultrafast photography (CUP), the research team created movies using images taken with a single laser shot that contained: "laser pulse reflection, refraction, faster-than light propagation of what is called non-information, and photon racing in two media," the researchers reported.
"For the first time, humans can see light pulses on the fly," said study leader Lihong Wang, the Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering . "Because this technique advances the imaging frame rate by orders of magnitude, we now enter a new regime to open up new visions. Each new technique, especially one of a quantum leap forward, is always followed a number of new discoveries. It's our hope that CUP will enable new discoveries in science - ones that we can't even anticipate yet."
The camera is composed of a series of devices that are designed to work with high-powered microscopes and telescopes to capture natural phenomena in a new way. CUP photographs objects using a specialty lens that moves photons through a tube-like structure to something called a digital micromirror device (DMD) that contains about 1 million micromirrors. These tiny mirrors encode the images and reflect them onto a beam splitter that shoots to a slit of a streak in the camera. These photons are then converted into electrons that are sheared with electrodes.
"The electrodes apply a voltage that ramps from high to low, so the electrons will arrive at different times and land at different vertical positions. An instrument called a charge-coupled device (CCD) stores all the raw data. All of this occurs at the breathtaking pace of [five] nanoseconds. One nanosecond is a billionth of a second," the researchers reported.
The researchers plan for the novel camera to be used in biomedicine to detect diseases or uncover cellular environmental conditions.
The device could also have applications in astronomy and forensics. It could perform functions such as analyzing the activities of a supernova, tracking space junk, and reproducing bullet pathways. This type of technology could even help solve historical mysteries, such as debunking conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination by analyzing the physics of the infamous "magic bullet."
"Combine CUP imaging with the Hubble Telescope, and we will have both the sharpest spatial resolution of the Hubble and the highest temporal solution with CUP," Wang said. "That combination is bound to discover new science."
The work was published Dec. 4 in the journal Nature.
