Friday, September 18, 2009

The world's fastest camera captures images at 6 million fps

A group of researchers at UCLA have developed a camera that captures images at 6,000,000 frames per second, a thousand times faster than any conventional camera; this has been achieved using a new approach that is the product of 10 years of research. This new technique opens new possibilities in medical research, for example, capturing images of individual cells in the bloodstream, cancer cells or potential health risk.

How it works: Keisuke Goda, Kevin Tsia and team leader Bahram Jalali have developed this technique (because if not treated as such a device) that captures each photograph with ultrashort laser and a flash of light of a billionth of a second, this technique overcomes the need of a CCD or (CMOS sensor used in modern digital cameras), and unlike other high-speed cameras do not require refrigeration or high intensity lighting.

Once captured, each pulse is transformed into a series of similar data to the data in a fiber optic network, each of the laser pulses is a picture, amplified and, while reducing the shipping time to allow electron capture with a digitizer.
One of the problems is that traditional cameras are becoming less sensitive at higher speeds, since less exposure means less time available to collect the photons between tables, plus the signal becomes weaker and more prone to noise, This camera overcomes this problem through the optical amplification of the image.

Applications: This camera was tested in studies of the phenomena of laser ablation captured in real time, these studies will allow a better understanding and optimization of this technique, an important process in laser medicine.
Another medical application where the camera can be used in flow cytometry technique, used in blood tests. Traditional analyzers can count cells and determine their size, but can not take photos of them; this new technique must not only overcome this problem, but opens the possibility to detect individual cells, cancer cells or health risk.

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