MIT Scientists Develop New Laser-Based Camera System

Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have manufactured a camera that captures images, which is not present in the direct line of sight. The camera has a femtosecond laser that sends out very short bursts of light.

The light reflects from one object and then to a second object before reflecting onto the first object. The camera then captures the image. Algorithms can then be utilized to process the obtained information for reconstructing the hidden scene.

The camera system is being developed by Ramesh Raskar, an MIT Professor and his colleagues. The researchers have named the camera system as a femtosecond transient imaging system. The researchers stated that the camera has the ability to capture light at very short time scales. The camera generates a 3D time-image by gathering light continuously and computing the time and distance of each traveled pixel.

The camera solution is in the initial development phase. The researchers are working on precisely mapping scenes that are more complicated. They expect the system to be useful for machine vision and biomedical imaging applications and for examining industrial objects with hidden surfaces.