Full steam ahead for light fast camera
A team of scientists in the US has developed an imaging system capable of capturing images at six million images a second.
The camera technique, dubbed Serial Time-encoded Amplified Microscopy (STEAM), is six times faster than the best digital video cameras available, and can take an image every 163 nanoseconds.
Using special fibre-optic cables, STEAM works by reducing a 2-D image into a stream of light, allowing wavelengths to travel at different speeds, reports Nature.
Conventional digital cameras use charge-coupled devices (CCDs), a process that entails the reading of millions of pixels, whereas STEAM only needs to read a signal from its single photodetector.
Currently its resolution is just 2500 pixels, but the team from the University of California say this will be improved. Leader of the study, Dr Keisuke Goda, predicts the technology will help patients in the 'early stages of a disease', as fast-flowing cells in the body can be individually captured.
