[HN Gopher] New camera offers ultrafast imaging at a fraction of...
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       New camera offers ultrafast imaging at a fraction of the normal
       cost
        
       Author : wglb
       Score  : 64 points
       Date   : 2023-09-15 14:16 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (phys.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
        
       | xeonmc wrote:
       | So basically it's like a CRT sweeping electron beams across the
       | screen
        
       | beckerdo wrote:
       | Photos or it didn't happen!
        
         | araes wrote:
         | The full paper can be found here:
         | https://opg.optica.org/optica/fulltext.cfm?uri=optica-10-9-1...
         | 
         | It has pictures of:
         | 
         | Fig. 3. Side-view observation of laser-induced breakdown in
         | distilled water https://i.imgur.com/s4NeSmP.jpg
         | 
         | Fig. 4. Front-view imaging of cavitation dynamics
         | https://i.imgur.com/GCyW6xY.jpg
         | 
         | Fig. 5. Imaging the laser ablation of single-layer onion cells
         | https://i.imgur.com/K7H0uso.jpg
         | 
         | As well as setup and configuration
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | The claim to have photos. They did not seem to have shared them
         | :/
        
       | numpad0 wrote:
       | > He realized that rapidly changing the tilt angle of periodic
       | facets on a diffraction grating, which can generate several
       | replicas of the incident light traveling in different directions,
       | could present a way to sweep through different spatial positions
       | to gate out frames at different time points.
       | 
       | Is this saying that light through a lenticular lens sheet comes
       | out slightly early/late depending on angles, and the sheet could
       | be used as an array of delay lines with different time constants?
        
         | foota wrote:
         | I don't think so, I think it's more like sweeping an image
         | across multiple sensors over time using the grating (probably
         | via one of the piezo optical effects?)
         | 
         | But I'm not familiar with your terminology, so maybe that's
         | what you said :)
         | 
         | Edit: Ah, they're using a DMD. The paper is published here: htt
         | ps://opg.optica.org/optica/fulltext.cfm?uri=optica-10-9-1....
         | Iiuc when the DMD mirrors are switching between on and off you
         | can get different diffraction patterns while they're shifting,
         | and these different diffraction orders will move the image on
         | the camera.
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | how could light ever be early?
        
           | tzs wrote:
           | Suppose you have two points, X and Y, each distance d from
           | some origin O. At time 0, some light is emitted from O
           | towards both X and Y. The earliest it can arrive at either of
           | them is time d/c, where c is the speed of light in a vacuum.
           | 
           | If you want the light to arrive at different times you can
           | either do something to make the paths different lengths, or
           | to make the speed of light different on the two paths, or
           | both. You can't make the speed faster than c on either of the
           | paths but you can make it slower by making the light go
           | through something with an index of refraction greater than 1.
           | 
           | Now suppose you've got some thing that you have built to
           | process light, and you care about the differences in arrival
           | time of the light to different parts of the thing. There's
           | probably going to be some part of your thing that it makes
           | the most sense to use as a reference, and then describe light
           | arrival times elsewhere relative to that reference point.
           | 
           | There's usually no particular reason to pick as the reference
           | the point on your thing that light first reaches. If you do
           | indeed pick a reference that is not the earliest place of
           | contact with the light, then you can have light arrive
           | earlier at other parts of your thing.
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | light either arrives exactly on time, or arrives late. what
             | ever other convoluted description you want to come up with,
             | light cannot be early based on your equation of d/c
        
               | tzs wrote:
               | Consider light from a distant source, sufficiently far
               | away that the wavefront at your instrument is planar. You
               | have a planar sensor array parallel to the incoming
               | wavefront, so the wavefront arrives at all sensors at the
               | same time.
               | 
               | There are different kinds of sensors sensing different
               | aspects of the incoming light. You need to combine them,
               | making sure that you are combining readings that come
               | from the same plane of the wavefront.
               | 
               | But one of your sensors takes a little longer than the
               | others to process and produce a reading. You either need
               | to make that sensor start processing earlier than the
               | other sensors, or make the other sensors start processing
               | later, or add some sort of delay between the other sensor
               | outputs and the thing that combines all the sensor
               | outputs.
               | 
               | If you fix this by moving that one sensor a little out of
               | your sensor plane, moving it toward the light source,
               | most people, including most scientists, would say that
               | your fix was to make the light arrive at that sensor
               | earlier, because the light in fact arrives at that sensor
               | now before it arrives _at the other sensors_.
               | 
               | Let's say that the sensors process different wavelengths
               | of light. Then another adjustment you might do to get the
               | outputs synced would be to fill the space between where
               | light enters and the sensor plane with a gas that happens
               | to have a low index of refraction for the wavelengths the
               | slow sensor uses and a high index for the wavelengths the
               | other sensors use.
               | 
               | That would make the light arrive later at all the sensors
               | than it would have if the gas had not been added, but it
               | will less later at the slow sensor. But again nearly
               | everyone would say that what you fix did was make the
               | light arrive earlier at the slow sensor, because before
               | the fix light arrived at the slow sensor at the same time
               | it arrived _at the other sensors_ , and after the fix it
               | arrives at the slow sensor before it arrives _at the
               | other sensors_.
        
           | distract8901 wrote:
           | The speed of light isn't constant. Light travels slower in
           | glass and water than in air. The difference in light speed in
           | different materials is why refraction and lenses work.
           | Additionally, light can bounce around inside a prism or a
           | lens and take a longer path which takes more time.
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | sounds like you didn't quite think about the question.
             | everything you just said would make light late. it can't be
             | early though.
        
               | Dylan16807 wrote:
               | What definition of "on time" are you using, and why do
               | you assume it's the only good definition?
        
               | distract8901 wrote:
               | Early and late are typically relative terms. Some photons
               | absolutely can arrive _earlier than_ other, slower
               | photons.
        
               | spockz wrote:
               | Sure it can. If the material being used allows one speed
               | normally. And by changing something like voltage you can
               | make the light go faster or take a longer round. Then you
               | can speak of light being "early(Ier)" or late compared to
               | the default state.
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | "you can make the light go faster"
               | 
               | are you listening to the words you're saying? seriously?
               | yes, we can make light go slower so that the sensor
               | receives light at different times. i'm with you all the
               | way to the point you make some ridiculous not thought out
               | comment about making light go faster. No. Just stop. We
               | cannot do that. We can only slow light down.
        
               | dekhn wrote:
               | Nobody is saying they are increasing c, everything here
               | is relative. You are making many comments that are
               | misinterpreting what people are saying to you.
        
       | h1fra wrote:
       | 4.8 million frames per second is wild. Currently the phantom can
       | achieve I think 1.5M fps in black and white with a "postal stamp"
       | resolution. I wonder what resolution this camera could output but
       | I guess it's probably smaller than < 120px.
        
         | davidhyde wrote:
         | They should probably have indicated how many frames they can
         | capture too.
         | 
         | > The team created a DRUM camera with a sequence depth of seven
         | frames, meaning that it captures seven frames in each short
         | movie.
         | 
         | Seems like their movies could possibly only be 7 frames in
         | length so not really comparable to Phantom type cameras which
         | can capture a lot more content.
         | 
         | Still, it's great to see the mirror tech used in DLP projectors
         | having other uses. Some 3D resin printers use it too but that's
         | still projection I guess. I think those dlp mirror chips are
         | amazing and probably fascinating to hack around with.
        
           | h0l0cube wrote:
           | > He realized that rapidly changing the tilt angle of
           | periodic facets on a diffraction grating, which can generate
           | several replicas of the incident light traveling in different
           | directions, could present a way to sweep through different
           | spatial positions to gate out frames at different time
           | points.
           | 
           | My guess is the 'sequence depth' relates to the amount of
           | diffraction gates. So perhaps all that's needed is an
           | ultrafast shutter to string together a long 'movie'
        
       | billfruit wrote:
       | Does it use compressed sensing?
        
         | hgomersall wrote:
         | Without having read any more than can be gleaned from the
         | article, it sounds like it's using similar principles. That is,
         | the image is transformed into a domain (frequency) that is more
         | amenable to rapidly capturing the necessary information quickly
         | without time gating directly. It's not obvious to me what the
         | setup is, but this type of approach is neat.
        
         | sp332 wrote:
         | No. It's a really fancy mirror.
        
           | hinkley wrote:
           | pointing at several different sensors, or relying on the
           | speed of light to time shift arrival at the sensor? I still
           | can't tell from the article, but any of those would be a neat
           | trick.
        
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