Researchers shrink high-resolution color cameras down to the size of a grain of salt: A review of digital photography
Researchers from Princeton University and the University of Washington have developed a high resolution color camera roughly the size of a grain of coarse salt.
This new sensor technology combines meta surface optics and machine learning models to reconstruct images through a nano-optical camera. Specifically, research paper detailing the technology says ‘Light-modulating nano-optical cameras at the sub-wavelength scale could enable new applications in fields ranging from robotics to medicine. Although supersurface optics offers a path to such microscopic images, existing methods have achieved much poorer image quality than cumbersome refractive alternatives, essentially limited by aberrations at large apertures and low f-numbers. In this work, we close this performance gap by introducing a set of neural nano-optical imaging,’
The camera is based on a technology called hypersurface, which consists of 1.6 million cylinders. Each post is roughly the size of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Each post has unique geometry and functions like an optical antenna. According to Princeton, ‘Changing the design of each column is necessary to precisely shape the entire optical wavefront.’
Machine learning-based algorithms turn the lighting information from each post into actual images. Furthermore, the image quality surpasses anything that previous ultra-compact cameras could achieve. ‘A key innovation in camera making is the integrated design of the optical surface and the signal processing algorithms that generate the images. This has boosted the camera’s performance in natural light, in contrast to previous supersurface cameras that required lab-pure laser light or other ideal conditions to produce images. high quality photo ”, Felix Heide, who research by senior author and assistant professor of computer science at Princeton.
Previous micro-sized cameras captured blurry, distorted images. New nano-optical technology produces better, sharper images with more accurate colors and an expanded field of view. Computer science PhD student Ethan Tseng said: ‘It’s quite a challenge to design and configure these tiny nanostructures to do what you want. student at Princeton who co-led ‘tudy. ‘For the specific task of large-field RGB imaging, it was previously unclear how to co-engineer millions of nanostructures along with post-processing digital spans.’
Co-author Shane Colburn, Ph.D. student at the University of Washington’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, solved this problem by creating a computational simulation to automatically test different nanoantenna configurations. Colburn is currently an associate professor at the University of Washington.
Student research and co-author James Whitehead, fabricated a silicon nitride-based supersurface. According to research, the supersurface design can be mass-produced at a lower cost than traditional in-camera lenses.
The team’s approach itself is not new. However, combining surface optical technology with neural-based processing is. Microcameras could have significant uses in medical settings to enable minimally invasive endoscopy. It can also improve imaging capabilities for robots with size and weight constraints. Possibly thousands of tiny cameras could be placed in an array, turning a surface into a camera.
The study can be read in full here. Its authors include Ethan Tseng, Shane Colburn, James Whitehead, Luocheng Huang, Seung-Hwan Baek, Arka Majumdar, and Felix Heide.