On Friday, one team researchers at MIT and Georgia Tech have unveiled a new camera that uses an imaging technique that allows a computer to read the printed text of a book without turning the page.
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 team can also emit the radiation in ultra-short microbursts that measure the depth of a σελίδαs in a book based on the time it took for the radiation to reflect 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 of the tetrahertz radiation back to the camera is then analyzed by an algorithm developed by MIT researchers and designed to capture the temporal reflection data as an image. The image resulting from being printed on a given page is heavily deformed and so the signal is then processed by another algorithm developed by the Georgia Tech group, which is able to interpret individual letters from the distorted image .
MIT Media Lab researcher Mr. Barmak Heshmat referring to the algorithm that interprets the letters Reported: "Είναι πραγματικά τρομακτικό. Πολλές ιστοσελίδες έχουν κάποιες δικλείδες πιστοποίησης [captchas] για να βεβαιωθούν ότι δεν είστε ρομπότ. Ο αλγόριθμος αυτός μπορεί εύκολα να προσπελάσει πολλές από αυτές".
Tetrahertz imaging is one technology which is still in its infancy, and although researchers at MIT realized this technique could be used a decade ago to see through files, the algorithms weren't quite ready to read the result.
As a demonstration of the technique, the researchers printed a letter on individual sheets of paper and found that their technique could correctly identify letters up to nine pages deep. From there the reflected signal became too noisy to extract them 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, αφού ο Heshmat ανέφερε ότι το Μητροπολιτικό Μουσείο της Νέας Υόρκης ενδιαφέρεται έντονα για το έργο τους, δεδομένου ότι θα τους επιτρέψει να κοιτάξουν στα βιβλία που έχουν στην κατοχή τους και είναι τόσο παλιά που αν τα αγγίξουν θα τα βλάψουν ανεπανόρθωτα. Επιπλέον, επειδή η τεχνική απεικόνισης με ακτινοβολία tetrahertz είναι σε θέση να ξεχωρίσει τα χημικά προϊόντων από ένα αντικείμενο, η τεχνική θα μπορούσε όχι μόνο να χρησιμοποιηθεί για ανάγνωση βιβλίων αλλά και για να "διαβάσει" κάτι που είναι τυπωμένο σε μία λεπτή στρώση, όπως ο υμένας ενός χαπιού.
See below the relevant video from the presentation of the new technology:
