FRAME: If we were saying that high-speed cameras that collect 100.000 images per second are obsolete?
A research team at Lund University in Sweden has developed a camera machine που μπορεί τραβάει φωτογραφίες με ταχύτητα πέντε τρισmillions images per second, or one frame per 0,2 trillionths of a second.
The new camera will be able to record incredibly fast procedures that are going on in various research laboratories in chemistry, physics, biology, and biomedicine, which have so far not been shot on film.
To present the new FRAME technology, the researchers successfully filmed how light (a group of photons) travels a distance corresponding to the thickness of a paper.
Up to now, high-speed cameras recorded images one by one in a sequence. The new technology uses an innovative algorithm that records many coded images in one image. It then classifies them into a video sequence.
The camera is intended to be used initially by researchers who want to get a better picture of the many extremely fast processes that occur in nature. According to the researchers: "in the long run, the technology can be used by industry and others."
For the researchers themselves, the greatest benefit of this technology is not that they have managed to break a new record of speed but that they are capable of filming how to change specific substances in the same process.
"Today, the only way to capture such rapid events is to capture still images of a process. Next, you should try to repeat the same experiments to get enough still images that can later be edited into a movie. "The problem with this approach is that it is very unlikely that the process will be the same if you repeat the experiment," said researchers Elias Kristensson and Andreas Ehn.
Researchers call the new FRAME - Frequency Recognition Algorithm for Multiple Exposures.
A normal flash camera uses normal light, but in this case the researchers use "coded" light flashes, as a form of encryption. Each time a coded flash strikes the object - for example, a chemical reaction in a burning flame - the object emits an image signal (response) with the exact same coding. So each movement has different codes and the image signals are recorded in a single photo. These encoded image signals are then separated using an encryption key from a computer.
A German company has already developed a prototype of this technology, which means that over two years it will be used by more scientists.
FRAME - Frequency Recognition Algorithm for Multiple Exposures PDF
Contact:
Elias Kristensson, combustion physics researcher, + 46 46 222 47 56, 46 73 369, elias.kristensson@forbrf.lth.se
Andreas Ehn, combustion physics researcher, + 46 46 222 39 28, andreas.ehn@forbrf.lth.se
