Single-pixel camera has multiple futures
Terahertz version adds new potential to unique invention
A terahertz version of the single-pixel camera developed by rice University researchers could lead to breakthrough technologies in security, telecom, signal processing and medicine. The research, recently published online in Applied Physics Letters, describes a way to replace the expensive, multipixel sensor arrays used in current terahertz imaging systems with a single sensor.
Two keys to the system are the ongoing development of a modulator that would feed a rapid-fire series of randomized images to the sensor, and the compressed sensing algorithm that turns the raw data into an image.
The advances "could make for very inexpensive security and scientific cameras in the near future," said Richard Baraniuk, Rice's Cameron Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, who helped make a proof-of-concept prototype that used 600 sheets of copper (which blocks terahertz radiation) through which random holes had been punched as the modulator.
"There's very good reason to believe you could build a terahertz modulator that could do that same task electrically, and very fast," said Daniel Mittleman, a Rice professor in electrical and computer engineering, who is testing a 4-by-4 array of metamaterials supplied by Los Alamos National Laboratory that become opaque to terahertz radiation when a voltage is applied.
"There are lots of applications for terahertz imaging, if you could make a real-time imager that's sensitive enough. Some of them are pretty science-fictiony, but some are pretty realistic," Mittleman said. "I think this is really promising."
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