Small camera with a grain of salt takes super sharp color photos

Despite its ultra-small size, the new camera model can capture color images at the same quality as conventional lenses 500,000 times larger.

The new ultra-compact optical device was developed by a team from Princeton University and the University of Washington. The device overcomes the problem of previous micro-camera designs, which often produced distorted and blurred images with very limited field of view. The new camera could allow microscopic robots to sense their surroundings, even helping doctors look into problems inside the human body.

Ultra-small camera placed on the fingertip.

Large cameras typically use a series of glass or plastic lenses that bend the beam of light that hits the focal point of the film or digital sensor. In contrast, the tiny camera developed by computer scientist Ethan Tseng and colleagues relies on a special ultra-thin surface with 1.6 million pillars, each as large as an HIV virus, that can adjust the orientation. of light.

Each column on the 0.5 mm wide surface has a unique shape that allows it to function as an antenna. The machine learning algorithm then decodes each column's interaction with the light, transforming it into an image. The images taken from this micro device provide the highest quality images with the widest field of view of any ultra-thin color camera ever developed.

Previous designs tended to suffer from distortion, limited field of view, and problems capturing the full spectrum of visible light due to their reliance on combinations of primary colors such as red, green and blue. blue to create other colors.

In addition to being slightly blurred near the edge of the frame, the pictures taken with the new tiny camera can be compared with a regular large camera equipped with 6 refracting lenses. The camera can also work well in natural light instead of having to use a laser or requiring ideal conditions like previous ultra-thin cameras to produce high-quality images.

To overcome the difficulty of having millions of tiny microstructures on an ultrathin surface, optics expert Shane Colburn at the University of Washington created a digital model that simulates the camera design with the resulting images, allowing allowing them to evaluate and refine the configuration. According to Colburn, the huge number of antennas on each surface and the complexity of their interactions with light mean that each simulation uses large amounts of memory and time.

Currently, the team is working to add more computing power to the camera, helping to improve image quality and detect objects. They published the study in the journal Nature Communications on November 29.