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October 16, 2006

Single Pixel Digital Camera

A single pixel digital camera? That's right, researchers at Rice University in Houston Texas have developed a prototype camera that uses a single pixel image sensor. But it doesn't look like this technology will be hitting your local Best Buy anytime soon, the prototype takes up several square feet of a large laboratory workbench. Another drawback of the camera is that it takes five minutes for each picture to expose.

The process used is called Compressive Sensing light from an image is scattered using a digital micro-mirror device (DMD) and picked up using a single photodiode sensor.


DMDs are most commonly found in movie projectors, they're tiny microchips covered in mirrors and can be tilted back and forth. In this prototype camera the mirrors are randomly oriented and a snapshot of the scattered light is picked up by a photodiode. This process is then repeated several THOUSAND times and the data collected is them assembled into an image.

Via Tech Digest

Posted by eric at October 16, 2006 4:25 AM