[HN Gopher] Detecting edges of images at the speed of light
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Detecting edges of images at the speed of light
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 82 points
Date : 2025-01-26 23:28 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| esperent wrote:
| Edge detection is used a lot in 2d & 3d graphics, microscopy,
| telescopy, photography, and a ton of other fields.
|
| If this could be done almost instantaneously and without
| additional energy, it would be very useful.
|
| I can imagine having tiny analogue edge detection component in
| cameras, microscopes, telescopes, and maybe even graphics cards.
|
| This could be a part of the future of computing - tiny
| specialized analogue components for specific tasks.
|
| On the other hand, maybe digital compute, whether silicone or
| futuristic alternatives, will always be cheap enough that the
| economics will never work out - it'll always just be cheaper to
| throw more general purpose compute at a problem.
| 0u89e wrote:
| I'm not really sure how any of this applies to software
| development, as they detected edges in actual physical films,
| which have different layers of chemicals. Still a very
| interesting approach and that knowledge probably can be
| transfered to other fields, as humans consist of layers of
| chemicals, that are different from cars, houses and trees for
| example, but could you and other people just actually read the
| paper before writing anything here?
|
| PS The title of article is on a clickbait level, as the meaning
| for images nowadays does not correspond to what is used in
| article.
| kidel001 wrote:
| To add onto this... some amount of what they are calling edge
| detection here seems to overlap with what has already been
| implemented in microscopy using phase contrast... which has
| been around since 1932.
| juancn wrote:
| They made a 7 layer film that does edge detection photonically,
| original paper:
| https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsphotonics.4c01667
| mcherm wrote:
| Unless I am missing something, the article doesn't actually
| explain HOW this was done, nor does it link to a research paper
| or other source that explains it.
|
| In my mind, this disqualifies this article from being something
| "that good hackers would find interesting" and thus not
| appropriate for this site.
|
| (Please someone, tell me I missed the part where they actually
| explained it.)
| owobeid wrote:
| The link to the paper is in the first paragraph.
|
| https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsphotonics.4c01667
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| "Tamm Plasmon Polaritons" sounds like something from Star
| Trek technobabble.
| nelblu wrote:
| Darmok and Jalad on the ocean!
| Galatians4_16 wrote:
| Shaka, when the walls fell.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Technobabble in TNG-era shows was actually quite consistent
| and even made sense if you squinted at it.
| mrandish wrote:
| Yes, there were people on the production staff who, in
| addition to other duties, were responsible for
| maintaining as much consistency as possible in both
| technical descriptions and capabilities with prior
| episodes and Star Trek canon. Mike Okuda was one such
| person.
|
| Obviously, the show was fiction and made for a broad
| general audience, so their technical inputs were
| sometimes 'streamlined' by the producers to minimize too
| much technical explication dialogue. But they generally
| did try to get enough on-screen to be both series-
| consistent and technically plausible within the fictional
| universe.
| fzimmermann89 wrote:
| If I am not mistaken, this is done by modulation in Fourier
| space. We have already been using this in optical setups for ages
| - at the speed of light.
|
| The interesting part imo is the implementation of this idea in
| their work and the efficiency and physical size.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Damn, there goes my idea. The other day I wondered how far you
| could go by embedding classical and neural filters in plastic
| sheets, to make a "magic lens" that does some img2img
| transformation in real time. E.g. pixelizing should be relatively
| simple, but I wonder if you could go as far as transforming a
| small image classifier (say, "cat" vs. "hot dog") into a physical
| object, to create a passive "lens" that turns incoming light into
| words ("cat", "hot dog", "N/A")? Feels like it should be doable.
|
| Anyway, thanks for the link; I'll study the paper and look up at
| the references.
| koromak wrote:
| I suppose if your lens is actually a vertical stack of lenses,
| each with hundreds of inputs and outputs, then why wouldn't
| this work? Although I cannot fathom fabricating it. Maybe start
| by finding the absolute simplest/smallest image classifier you
| can
| koromak wrote:
| EDIT: Of course people are already doing this. D2NN seems to
| be the keyword, Diffractive Deep Neural Networks
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Yes, by "lens" I meant a possibly large stack of optical
| elements, each designed to perform a single computational
| step. Kind of like layers of an NN, but etched on sheets of
| plastic.
|
| Thanks for finding the proper term for this!
| Xmd5a wrote:
| I've had the same idea for a while, but the classifier I had in
| mind was for identifying wood ("yep, it's wood"). I wonder if
| this kind of tech could be used for low-light enhancement
| (night vision). This would require "injecting" light into the
| "lens" I guess.
|
| MNIST classifier using a DNN:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s44172-024-00211-6
| Someone wrote:
| > pixelizing should be relatively simple
|
| https://www.yankodesign.com/2024/07/04/this-crystal-
| fragment...:
|
| _"The Pixel Mirror measures 16mm x 16mm x 10mm, which means
| it's small enough to be worn as a pendant in a necklace.
| Monoli's series of wearable and handheld prisms are all
| handmade, and because of the nature of polishing natural
| stones, they are not perfect square "pixels". They are handmade
| to suit the condition of the available stone."_
|
| Discussed on HN in
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40895907 and
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40890633
| infogulch wrote:
| Huygens Optics has a great video "Fourier Optics used for Optical
| Pattern Recognition". He starts with explaining the Fourier
| Transform wrt audio, then demonstrates a physical filter that
| screens the resulting convolution pattern to identify matches.
| Very cool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9FZ4igNxNA
| uhahohheck wrote:
| OT, but: Oh...wait...just another thursday, ich came here to HN
| just for the new games, and no... not one single ...no new game
| at all on the frontpage of HN... so what the heck, busy everyone
| ?
|
| [modus:with.a.sense.for.the.weekend]
|
| regards,...
| kidel001 wrote:
| Technically... they are outlining edges at the speed of light.
| Detection is a separate process entirely.
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