Την Παρασκευή, μια team ερευνητών στο MIT και στο Georgia Tech παρουσίασε μια νέα κάμερα η οποία χρησιμοποιεί μία τεχνική απεικόνισης που της επιτρέπει μέσω ενός υπολογιστή να διαβάσει το τυπωμένο κείμενο από ένα βιβλίο χωρίς να ξεφυλλίσει.
The technique looks a bit like Superman's fantasy films, but instead uses X-ray vision, uses tetrahertz radiation and an interpretive algorithm.
As detailed in a document published in Nature Communications., the system uses tetrahertz radiation (the range of electromagnetic radiation between microwaves and infrared light) which has a number of advantages over other surface wave penetration such as X-rays or ultrasound.
The tetrahertz radiation is absorbed by different chemicals in different ways, which can be used to distinguish paper and ink in a book. OR camera tetrahertz used by the group can also emit radiation into ultra-short microbursts that measure the depth of a page in a book based on the time it took for the radiation to be reflected from the book back to the camera.
These ultra-short bursts of radiation perceive depth in very fine detail, so that researchers can measure the distance from the radiation source to individual pages in a book, separated by air pockets that can be as small as 20 microns. depth (small = millimeters, ie as much as 1/1000 of a millimeter).
The reflection from the ink of tetrahertz radiation back to the camera is then analyzed by an algorithm developed by the MIT researchers designed to capture the temporal reflection data as an image. The resulting image printed on a given page is highly distorted, so the signal is then processed by another algorithm developed by the Georgia Tech team, which is able to interpret individual letterfrom the distorted image.
MIT Media Lab researcher Mr. Barmak Heshmat referring to the algorithm that interprets the letters Reported"It's really scary. Many websites have some captchas to make sure you are not a robot. "This algorithm can easily access many of them."
Tetrahertz imaging is a technology that is still in its infancy and although MIT researchers realized this technique could be used a decade ago to see someone through folders, the algorithms were not quite ready to read result.
Ως evidence της τεχνικής, οι ερευνητές τύπωσαν ένα γράμμα σε μεμονωμένα φύλλα χαρτιού και διαπίστωσαν ότι η τεχνική τους θα μπορούσε να προσδιορίσει σωστά τα γράμματα έως εννέα σελίδες βαθιά. Από εκεί και πέρα το ανακλώμενο σήμα έγινε πολύ θορυβώδες για να εξαγάγουν τις information from a page, but they assume that as radiation sensors continue to develop and get better the technique should one day be able to read entire books without ever opening them.
And that was their purpose for that project, after Heshmat said that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is keenly interested in their work, as it will allow them to look at the books in their possession and they are so old that if touched they will damage them irreparably. In addition, because the tetrahertz radiation imaging technique is able to separate chemicals from an object, the technique could not only be used to read books but also to "read" something that is printed in a thin layer, such as film of a pill.
See below the relevant video from the presentation of the new technology:
