Researchers Developing Single-Pixel Camera

Assassin bug writes "According to the BBC, researchers in the US are developing a single-pixel camera to capture high-quality images without the 'expense' of traditional digital photography. The idea behind such a device is that traditional digital photography is wasteful. Most of the information taken in by the camera is thrown away in the compression process. From the article: 'The digital micromirror device, as it is known, consists of a million or more tiny mirrors each the size of a bacterium. "From that mirror array, we then focus the light through a second lens on to one single photo-detector - a single pixel." As the light passes through the device, the millions of tiny mirrors are turned on and off at random in rapid succession. Complex mathematics then interprets the signals assembling a high resolution image from the thousands of sequential single-pixel snapshots. '"

Yes, it's a dupe.

[by Anonymous Coward]

A Single Pixel Camera [slashdot.org]
Posted by CowboyNeal on 10-20-06 12:44 AM
from the high-tech-pointilism dept.

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Still patented too

[goombah99 (560566)]

The coherent detection version of this was patented 11 years ago.
Apparatus and method for heterodyne-generated, two-dimensional detector array using a single detector [uspto.gov]

Re:Still patented too

[Rei (128717)]

At first, I thought this was going to be similar to the method of generating hires images from a small number of sensors utilized by jumping spiders [wikipedia.org]. Basically, they vibrate [pbs.org] their [spacedaily.com] retinas [abc.net.au], recording datapoints from the in-between locations to get in-between pixels.

Not just for cameras

[k4_pacific (736911)]

In related news, a major roofing manufacturer has announced the "single shingle" roof. It consists of a small plate that is quickly moved about above a building during a rainstorm to block each individual raindrop. This eliminates the "complexity" of asphalt shingles.

Re:Not just for cameras

[Chandon Seldon (43083)]

That would work... if shingles were really expensive and the mechanism to move the one shingle around at the necessary speed were comparatively cheap. Oh... and you knew that you never needed to block raindrops in two places at the same time.

There are tons of ideas that work great in computerized systems that sound *really stupid* when you think of doing something that seems similar but uses other materials / technology. I mean - consider the mechanism of an ink jet printer from the perspective of a portrait artist who works with pencils...

Re:Not just for cameras

[AK Marc (707885)]

Is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointillism [wikipedia.org] what you were thinking of? I love a good Seurat.

Murphy's Law

[by Anonymous Coward]

Bet it'd suck to have a bad pixel with that camera, huh? :-)

1MP?

[UPZ (947916)]

Next thing you know, they'll be inventing a single core processor.

RAW format anyone?

[by Anonymous Coward]

> Most of the information taken in by the camera is thrown away in the compression process.

Doesn't the RAW format take care of this?

Re:RAW format anyone?

[John Meacham (1112)]

The problem is not getting at that extra information, like you say, we can already do that with RAW. the problem is that a lot of resources (such as CCD area) go into capturing this extra information which is then simply discarded. By taking a random sampling of pixels, one gets exactly as much information is needed to construct the compressed version of the image without waste. plus, with only a single CCD, you can make it incredibly sensitive, to the point where it can count single photons. Heck, you could probably have some fun with wavelengths. different wavelengths get diffracted slightly differently, if you could take advantage of that to redirect photons of different wavelengths at the sensor. you could have a camera that takes _full spectrum_ pictures. not just at the single pretty but not very informative red green and blue lines. (tetrachromats rejoice!). Full spectrum sampling in a small package would be really cool, I mean, that is tricorder technology. This is very neat research.

Re:RAW format anyone?

[Pieroxy (222434)]

There is always a catch, however. Let's take an example of a 1MP camera, taking a picture at 1/100th of a second. Each CCD can acquire light for a full 1/100th of a second. But each one is small and as such, not very sensitive.

Let's say this new 1 pixel camera is set-up to take a picture of 1MP at 1/100th of a second. Each one of the 1M mirrors will reflect its light on the CCD for ... (1/100)/1000000 th of a second, because only one pixel (of the final image) can be recorded at a time. So yes, the new sensor will be more sensitive. And it better be ! 1 000 000 times to be correct (for 1MP pictures.)

complex mathematics?

[superwiz (655733)]

Surely, you mean "complicated". Mathematics already has a use for the word "complex".

Re:complex mathematics?

[Jerf (17166)]

It's a little clue for those "in the know" that the described benefits are entirely imaginary.

We'll See...Betamax anyone?

[MuChild (656741)]

1) Create a million bacteria-sized mirrors. 2) ???? 3) Profit!

Hot or stuck pixel?

[jo7hs2 (884069)]

Oh great, now I'll end up with a camera with a stuck or hot pixel and be totally screwed. Thanks, progress.

it's called "Compressed Sensing"

[toby (759)]

And this story hit the UK Guardian on 9 Nov 2006. [guardian.co.uk] (via CS maven my slice of pizza [blogspot.com].)

I used it for my holiday snaps

[Timesprout (579035)]

This is me skydiving
.

This is me swimming with dolphins
.

This is me at the grand canyon
.

Re:I used it for my holiday snaps

[by Anonymous Coward]

This is me having sex with my wife (NSFW)

.

Re:I used it for my holiday snaps

[MindStalker (22827)]

Dude, you should link stuff like that and no post directly.. I really didn't want to see your ugly whale of a wife..

mod parent down!

[Achoi77 (669484)]

freakin goatse trolls!

Ah, more moving parts. THAT's helpful.

[ScentCone (795499)]

Is it just me, or does the concept seem inherently more complex and fragile than a multi-pixel sensor with light cast on it?

And how can this possibly deal with the equivalent of a range of shutter speeds in front of a standard sensor? Perhaps it's a matter of how many times the pixel is exposed to the same part of the lens' projection in repeated scans... but that just seems clunky, and that much harder/slower to re-assemble into a stored image.

And it doesn't stop the megapixel chest thumping - it just starts up megamirror arguments, instead.

Re:Ah, more moving parts. THAT's helpful.

[Jeff DeMaagd (2015)]

Micromirrors are actually very reliable and even exceed the lifetime of a typical LED now, of hundreds of thousands of hours of constant flexing. It turns out that nano-scale objects have different properties. A piece of metal on the nanoscale is likely to be a single crystal and that usually eliminates the fatigue issue. I think this has more uses in the sciences though.

Contradicts itself.

[Xoltri (1052470)]

The article says that this new camera will have do do "Complex mathematics to interpret the signals" but at the same time will "do away with the need to process and compress each image". So which is it? I just don't see how this will save anything if you have 1 pixel doing something 5 million times or 5 million pixels doing something one time.

Seems like it would have one huge drawback

[Solandri (704621)]

Low light sensitivity. Digital cameras gain light sensitivity by acting as light buckets. Moreso for CMOS sensors than CCD, but the important thing is that all those sensor pixels are collecting light for their individual pixel simultaneously - in parallel. With a single pixel sensor, this light collection would have to happen in series to achieve the same light sensitivity. If your shutter speed in low light is 1/25 sec with a 5MP traditional digital camera, in order for a single-pixel camera to take the same picture it would need an exposure time of (1/25 sec/pixel)*(5M pixels)*(10% assumed algorithmic efficiency) = 20,000 sec = 5 hours 33 min 20 sec.

Of course since you're doing all this with mirrors, you could set up a megapixel array and have different mirrors shine at different pixels simultaneously (just like a DLP). But that seems to defeat the purpose of the whole rig.

Re:Dupe

[orson_of_fort_worth (871181)]

Shh. We can score some karma by copying the +5 posts from the original story.