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Camera that Sees through Smoke and Fog Underway

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the looking-glasses dept.

tomschuring writes "The Age has a story about IATIA, who have been given $2.7 million by the Defence Department to fund development of a military spy camera capable of seeing through fog, smoke and dust storms. The technology uses a highly sophisticated camera that captures three images simultaneously through a single lens. Images thus resolved from between the particles making up fog, smoke, and dust storms are formed into a single picture of the hidden target."

15 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. Warning: Registraton Required by RKBA · · Score: 5, Informative

    BugMeNot username and password:
    Username: registrationsucks1 Password: asdoestheage

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  2. density by Coneasfast · · Score: 5, Insightful

    how dense can the fog particles be? this camera would have to have an extremely large resolution to do this kind of thing. anyone have any specs on this?

    the uses for this are endless, eg, if the technology becomes cheap enough, we can have this in cars to help driving during foggy weather.

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  3. Other versions available... by physicsphairy · · Score: 5, Funny

    "that captures three images simultaneously through a single lens." There is also a Kodak version, where one set of pictures is lost, another is misdeveloped, and the third is inadvertently sent to your ex with the same middle initial.

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    When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
  4. Re:also by brocheck · · Score: 5, Funny

    I wonder if it would let you see through the particles that many dresses consist of.

    I'd buy one.

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    suddenly I feel very tired

  5. Unused links on how it works - some detail by tqft · · Score: 5, Informative

    Some detailed links on how it works

    http://www.iatia.com.au/technology/insideQpi.asp

    http://www.iatia.com.au/technology/applicationNo te s.asp

    he algorithm has a number of key advantages, including:

    * Returns phase and intensity information independently
    * Provides quantitative, absolute phase (with DC offset)
    * Is a rapid, stable, non-iterative solution
    * Works with non-uniform and partically coherent illumination
    * Offers relaxed beam conditioning
    * Solves the twin image problem of holography
    * Has been experimentally applied to a number of radiations

    You can find their list of patents on theire site. Digging into these should give you more detail.

    I don't care I am going on holidays for 3 weeks in 3hours

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  6. Can it see through smoke and mirrors? by telly333 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just in time for politics.slashdot.org!


    telly

  7. Dense Camera Arrays for seeing through bushes by vectra14 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    These guys at stanford have done some really amazing stuff that's directly related. Except that they has literally dozens of cameras (as seen in their ppt), and their research seems to concentrate on multifocal image reconstruction (see ppt slides, presentation is quite good)

    Link (has cool results links)

    1. Re:Dense Camera Arrays for seeing through bushes by ajna · · Score: 5, Interesting
      The Stanford work is actually entirely different. They utilize parallax -- in other words, their cameras are in physically distinct locations and see the scene with different perspectives. The IATIA work utilizes a single point of view, with images captured with the focal plane at the desired location and then slightly fore and aft. Read more here, at a Columbia site.

      Quantitative phase microscopy is a relatively new technique that can generate phase images and phase-amplitude images. In practice, to obtain a quantitative phase image one collects an in-focus image and very slightly positively and negatively defocused images, and uses these data to estimate the differential with respect to the defocus of the image. These images (a through-focal series) can be easily obtained in our system with our z-motion nano-positioner. The resulting data can be solved to yield the phase distribution by Fourier-transform methods. Results are obtained by essentially solving an optical transport equation. Significantly, the phase that is obtained does not have to be unwrapped, as is required for interferometry.


      I'd be lying if I told you I completely understand the quoted paragraph, specifically what "essentially solving an optical transport equation" refers to, but I'm sure some cursory googling will lead the curious to specifics, certainly more than googling on terms in the article summary would yield.
  8. Re:also by AndroidCat · · Score: 5, Funny

    If they make one that can see through fingers and lenscaps, I am so there!

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  9. Re:also by Rufus211 · · Score: 5, Informative

    ABCNEWS.com : Cameras Let Voyeurs See Through Clothes

  10. Re:We don't need this by rebelcool · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Who are you to say "we dont need this"? You can forsee all applications of a technology before its made? And you automatically assume just because the money is initially military its going to be used to "kill people"? What nonsense.

    This would useful for finding people in a burning building full of smoke. Or imagine putting it onto a car as a warning system in heavy fog that you're approaching an obstacle too fast. Same with planes. Surely more creative people than I can dream up a dozen applications for this.

    Here's a tip about research: The military has a ton of money, and they spend it on all kinds of things that have nothing to do with "killing people". As pointed out already, the internet was a defense project. So was GPS. So was radar. So was a million other extremely useful things.

    "We dont need this" - we don't need you and your cluelessness.

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  11. my thoughts by Large+Bogon+Collider · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I'm not a 100% sure, but the technique involves phase shift. As light of a single frequency passes though an medium, its phase is altered and light propagation is delayed. If you can computationally filter out all out of phase shift information caused by fog, for example, you can "see" what the hidden object looked like. This process is quite CPU intensive. It seemed that about a grayscale SVGA sized image (0.41 mp) took 1.5 secs on a PIV 2.4GHz to calculate. This should improve with algorith tweaking and using FPGAs.

    This may also have medical applications in terms of optical imaging - see through the patient (arms and legs only, probably). Shine a bright light at the patient. Capture the ealiest photos that emerge (the ones that had a direct path to the camera). Ignore slow photons (ones that were absorbed and release or bounced around). Voila, instant imaging without x-rays. IIRC, this was in development years ago.

  12. Re:also by wwelch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hopefully fire departments will be able to afford this technology so that fire fighters will be able to see people through the smoke of the fire...

  13. I don't know about this... by NathanM412 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sounds like vaporware to me!

  14. Re:also by WhiteDeath · · Score: 5, Informative


    I found this site about 6 years ago...

    they sell the filters, and give a good run-down on the theory.