Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

New Medical Camera the Size of a Grain of Salt

Posted by Soulskill on from the unlocking-the-mysteries-of-your-salt-shaker dept.

kkleiner writes "The German Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration recently reported the development of a camera with a lens attached that is 1 x 1 x 1.5 millimeters in size, which is roughly as big as a grain of salt. At about a cubic millimeter in size, this camera is right at the size limit that the human eye can see unaided. The camera not only produces decent images but is also very cheap to manufacture — so cheap, in fact, that it is considered disposable."

21 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. You have to take this announcement... by MrEricSir · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...with a grain of salt.

    (But watch out, that grain of salt might be a tiny camera.)

    --
    There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
  2. SI units fail? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't know what would be more amazing. People confusing a 1mm cube for a "grain of salt", or people being unable to see a 1mm cube object without aid. That's like the size of a ball bearing, or short grain rice! I didn't realize SI units were this hard to grasp...

    1. Re:SI units fail? by _0xd0ad · · Score: 2

      The actual press release said a grain of "coarse" salt.

  3. Insect Eyes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Put enough of them together and we might be able to make a decent approximation of the faceted eyes of insects

  4. In America.... by PCM2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In the United States, where the hospital bills for a procedure of this kind are likely to run into thousands of dollars, "disposable" has a pretty broad definition.

    --
    Breakfast served all day!
    1. Re:In America.... by _0xd0ad · · Score: 2

      That's what I thought too. TFA doesn't say, but the press release (one of the "sources" listed in TFA) indicates that they'll be bringing disposable endoscopes to the market in 2012 for "only a few euros".

      Also, "decent" image = 250x250 pixels at 44 FPS. No indication of whether it's color or grayscale, but I suspect it's grayscale. The press release says it supplies "razor-sharp pictures", but I suspect that's only by comparison to existing endoscopes...

    2. Re:In America.... by NEDHead · · Score: 2

      Maybe 'razor sharp' is like after your wife uses in on her legs but forgets to mention it...

    3. Re:In America.... by _0xd0ad · · Score: 2

      I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I need a car analogy.

    4. Re:In America.... by fotbr · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not if you can bill the customer more for the "latest and greatest".

      Just because it costs health care providers less, that doesn't mean that you should expect it to cost YOU less.

    5. Re:In America.... by ColdWetDog · · Score: 2

      It's likely grayscale, but you just put three of them together, one with a red filter, one with a blue filter and one with a green filter and you've got color. 250 x 250 isn't near good enough for medical endoscopy, but you obviously can stack a couple of them together in an array - that's old tech. Extra points for making a radial array and reconstructing a nearly 360 degree image.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  5. Are you blind? by Shin-LaC · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A cubic millimeter is hardly "at the size limit that the human eye can see unaided". A fleck of dust is quite a bit smaller than that, and perfectly visible.

    1. Re:Are you blind? by MozeeToby · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It depends how far away your eye is from it. The claim stands.

      Then you could make the same claim for anything.

      "US Navy reveals a a new battleship that is smaller than the human eye can see*

      *if the human is 5 million miles away from said battleship"

      Reasonably, 'at the size limit the human eye can see' to me means exactly that. There is a size below which you can't see unaided, no matter how close you bring your eye to the object because there's a limit to how closely your eye can focus. That size is at least one, and probably 2 orders of magnitude smaller than this camera.

    2. Re:Are you blind? by Noren · · Score: 2

      I used to work doing single-crystal X-ray crystallography, one part of the job was mounting a crystal onto the tip of a tiny glass rod. I was looking for a single crystal no larger than 0.5 mm in any direction, and hopefully at least 0.1mm in the smallest dimension, though at times they were smaller than that if they were needles or thin planes. I would sometimes work under a not particularly powerful magnifying glass, though it's quite possible to see a crystal that size with the naked eye, even colorless, transparent crystals as most of these were. Being quite nearsighted was actually a plus, as I could take off my glasses and at 5 cm or so away see objects of that size quite well with the naked eye.

    3. Re:Are you blind? by confused+one · · Score: 2

      I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I need a car analogy..

      a millimeter is the same as a 0.040" spark plug gap.

    4. Re:Are you blind? by Barsema · · Score: 2

      I found a picture of the submitter explains alot :-)

  6. Poetry by bigattichouse · · Score: 2

    Sprinkle vision on the wind,
    like grains of sand I see.
    motes of thought they drift and float,
    and bring my data back to me.

    --
    meh
  7. Limit of human vision? by Russ1642 · · Score: 2

    I must have amazing vision because I can see things way smaller tha 1x1x1.5 mm.

  8. Re:if they are so cheap.... by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 2

    ....then I might want to pick one up to play around with it and maybe find other uses for it

    Is it wrong that the first application I thought of was to give one of these to the Goatse guy? :)

    Yes. You could get a Panavision film camera in there.

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  9. Haiku by skidisk · · Score: 2

    Camera small, like dust
    Travel by wind, or fiber
    Fantastic Voyage.

  10. Re:if they are so cheap.... by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1. The image is 250 x 250 px at 44 fps.
    2. It's so tiny that there's no way it could have a useful FOV for anything macroscopic, much less be able to focus on anything more than a few cm away.
    3. This is medical technology we're talking about, so there's probably a hundred-thousand licensing fee to even look at it, even if the camera itself is only a few pennies.

    --
    Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
  11. Re:Privacy by daem0n1x · · Score: 2

    On the other hand, having had my stomach examined a few times, this sounds like heaven. Not even mentioning the guys that took it in the other end...