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Scientists Build World's Fastest Camera
Hugh Pickens writes "Researchers have developed a camera that snaps images less than a half a billionth of a second long and can capture over six million images in a second continuously. Dubbed Serial Time-Encoded Amplified imaging, or Steam, the technique depends on carefully manipulating so-called 'supercontinuum' laser pulses. While other cameras used in scientific research can capture shorter-lived images, they can only capture about eight images, and have to be triggered to do so for a given event. The Steam camera, by contrast, can capture images continuously, making it ideal for random events that cannot be triggered. Keisuke Gode, lead author of the study, and his colleagues used their camera to image minute spheres flowing along a thin tube of water in a microfluidic device." (More below.)
High Pickens continues: "Using the STEAM camera they were able to image the spheres at a frame rate of 6.1 megahertz — in other words, the camera took a picture once every 163 nanoseconds. The camera could be used for studies of combustion, laser cutting and any system that changes quickly and unpredictably. One important application would be analyzing flowing blood samples. Because the imaging of individual cells in a volume of blood is impossible for current cameras, a small random sample is taken and those few cells are imaged manually with a microscope. 'But, what if you needed to detect the presence of very rare cells that, although few in number, signify early stages of a disease?,' asks Gode, citing circulating tumor cells as a perfect example of such a target. The team is working to extend the technique to 3-D imaging with the same time resolution, and to increase the effective number of pixels in a given image from 2,500 to 100,000."
So what moves at 6 million images a second that you would need a camera that can take 6 million images a second?
Perhaps I missed something here.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
But is this fast enough to photograph my wife with a closed mouth?
Steam, you say? Here comes Valve, and a small lawsuit. There are just never enough lawsuits in this world!
... and call it the Serial Time-Encoded Amplified imaging Engine.
Just imagine how awesome the explosions on Mythbusters will look with this high speed camera!
... Scientists build a camera faster than the world's fastest camera!
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I just did.
Want to see it again?
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Who the hell sifts through all these pictures after they are taken?
...image pixel area is 1x1!
So, they photograph a 50x50px square half a billion time in a split second.
But...
How would they store it ?
I mean... Are they going to compress on the fly a billion tiny image ?
I didn't see anything about that in TFA.
Ask her to say something nice about you.
A camera that will actually be able to take a half-fuzzy picture of a passing bigfoot.
Imagine how many data centers are needed to store all of the stuff once these cameras come into use.
-- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
So, anyone care to explain how well this goes up against something like the Rapatronic cameras? Obviously you're not limited to just one shot like the rapatronic.
SanDisk is now salivating at the prospect of a 2TB memory card, or two or three, as a MUST HAVE accessory for your next DSLR.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
...I'll be needing new video card, then.
They say they really developed this to record how fast Time Warner will cap your internet downloads.
LOL...ok, which cell phone company will race to put this in their latest phone. Megapixel....bahhh... the new XYZ camera phone can capture 6 million pictures a second!
At that rate isn't this just high-speed digital video? Really high-speed digital video? Or is digital high-speed just a series of stills taken really fast? I'm confused....
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
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coming to a microsoft mouse explorer near you!
... scientists now hope to catch Rosie O'Donnell in the act of stealing cheetos from infants.
Jason-Palmer.com
Grad Students, the cheap-labour gophers of the Ph. D's.
Sounds like a good candidate for their next camera.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
You could have at least posted a selection of 1-10 seconds of images.
1. Wouldn't the steam fog up the lens all the time?
2. Can I download Half Life through it?
3. Can it run linux?
B
Dubbed Serial Time-Encoded Amplified imaging, or Steam, the technique depends on carefully manipulating so-called "supercontinuum" laser pulses.
These pulses, less than a millionth of a millionth of a second long, contain an enormously broad range of colours.
Since when does a laser contain more than one color?
Hell yeah!
I'm sure this still isn't fast enough to capture light filling a room but I'd always dreamt of having such a video camera. Imagine, a recording a someone flicking a light switch and watching in slow-motion as the light bounces around the room filling each area. Aah, I can dream.
Put this into a tiger. Show it food. What will they see from the perspective of the eye of the tiger?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
"One important application would be analyzing flowing blood samples. Because the imaging of individual cells in a volume of blood is impossible for current cameras, a small random sample is taken and those few cells are imaged manually with a microscope. 'But, what if you needed to detect the presence of very rare cells that, although few in number, signify early stages of a disease?"
Or I could just use the flow cytometer with imager unit my lab already has to do this... because this is what it was designed to do.
"imaged manually"? this guy's insane if he thinks state of the art is to grab a cell and put it under a microscope manually.
Now, if he's talking about imaging individual cells as they continue to circulate through a living aorta, he may be on to something.
oh, and yes I am a grad student in modern bio.
the "footage", or, would they ... cheatah us out of that rolling stock...?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
How does this compare to STREAK cameras? Certainly, you can't take pictures of objects with a STREAK camera, but they have a much shorter exposure time of about 100fs and even shorter. Now use this with a modelocked pulse laser... or are the CCDs used in STREAK cameras to slow for taking pictures continously at such rates?
If you're only looking to capture a few seconds, just put it in RAM and write it to long-term storage later. Write speeds for high-end consumer RAM are in that neighborhood. DDR3 1800 can write just over 14GB/s. For a research project, 128 GB of RAM is certainly feasible. That will give you a full 9 seconds of video.
If you need more pixels you can line up arrays in parallel to capture several seconds from each array at the same time. They can all use the same clock so everything stays synchronized.
Why does a camera need to be this fast? Aren't they already fast enough?
Apparently, their RAID goes up to 11.
Does having a witty signature really indicate normality?
The fasted camera that is out there is from Specialized Imaging in the UK (www.specialised-imaging.com). It takes 2 billion full frames per second. NOTE: These cameras do not take many frames, maybe up to 128 or so. But they can image ultra fast events such as explosions, large scale or small scale, doesn't matter, but fast. I, myself, have a 200 million frames per second camera and it is able to record travelling light. Pretty cool stuff.
Bash quote:
<Handy> Japanese scientists have created a camera with such a fast shutter speed,
<Handy> they now can photograph a woman with her mouth shut.
From: http://www.bash.org/?537155
... Okay, I'll go get my coat.
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