Now researchers have built one capable of tracking a moving object and creating a 3D film of its motion!
Single pixel cameras are taking the world of imaging by storm. These counter-intuitive devices have the ability to photograph an entire scene in 3D and at a resolution of choice using a single pixel. Some versions do not even need a lens. These resultant images are entirely free of the optical aberrations that lenses can introduce; indeed the entire scene is always in focus.
Today, Gregory Howland at the University of Rochester in New York State and a few pals take this new technique even further. These guys have built a single pixel camera capable of making 3D images, used it to create a video images and even to track a moving object for the first time.
Single pixel cameras rely on a technique known as compressed sensing. The idea is to pass the light from a scene through a medium that randomizes it and then focuses it on to a single pixel. This randomising medium could be a piece of frosted glass, a spatial light modulator or, as in this case, a digital micro-mirror device in which the mirrors are arranged at random.
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