Conductive gated ultra-high-speed mapping camera is launched, suitable for various applications such as high-speed lidar systems for autonomous driving

Capturing clear images of fast motion, such as falling water droplets or molecular interactions, requires ultrafast cameras that can capture millions of images per second, which are very expensive. In a recent paper published in the journal Optics, Canadian scientists have developed a new type of camera that can achieve ultra-fast imaging in a cheaper way and is suitable for real-time monitoring of drug delivery, high-speed lidar systems for autonomous driving, etc. Various applications.

Researchers develop a DRUM camera that captures dynamic events in a single exposure at 4.8 million frames per second

This new type of diffraction-controlled real-time ultra-high-speed mapping (DRUM) camera jointly developed by the Canadian National Institute of Science, Concordia University and Metaverse Platform Company can capture single-exposure dynamic events at 4.8 million frames per second. They demonstrated this capability by imaging the interaction of femtosecond laser pulses with liquids in biological samples and the rapid dynamics of laser ablation.

The researchers developed a new time-gating method called time-varying optical diffraction. Cameras use gates to control when light hits the sensor. In time gating, the door opens and closes a certain number of times in rapid succession before the sensor reads out the image. This captures a high-speed short clip of a scene.

Taking into account the space-time duality of light, researchers figured out how to use light diffraction to accomplish time gating. Rapidly changing the tilt angle of the periodic facets on a diffraction grating generates multiple copies of the incident light traveling in different directions, providing a way to scan different spatial locations to exclude frames at different points in time. These frames can then be combined together to form a super-fast movie.

The researchers achieved this type of scanning diffraction gate in an unconventional way using digital micromirror devices. They created a DRUM camera with a sequence depth of 7 frames and used it to record the interaction of laser light with distilled water.

The new camera's imaging speed and spatial resolution are similar to commercial high-speed cameras, but it uses off-the-shelf components and costs less than 1/10 of today's ultrafast cameras, which start at nearly $100,000.

Source: Science and Technology Daily