The Planar Fourier Capture Array takes images from an array of angle-sensitive pixels. For example, at right, the camera reconstructed an image of the Mona Lisa.
It's like a Brownie camera for the digital age: The microscopic device fits on the head of a pin, contains no lenses or moving parts, costs pennies to make - and this Cornell-developed camera could revolutionize an array of science from surgery to robotics. The camera was invented in the lab of Alyosha Molnar, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and developed by a group led by Patrick Gill, a postdoctoral associate. Their working prototype, detailed online in the journal Optics Letters July 6, is a 100th of a millimeter thick and one-half millimeter on each side. The camera resolves images about 20 pixels across - not portrait studio quality, but enough to shed light on previously hard-to-see things. "It's not going to be a camera that people take family portraits with," Gill explained. "But there are a lot of applications out there that require just a little bit of dim vision." In fact, Gill, whose other research interests involve making sense of how the brain's neurons fire under certain stimuli, began this invention as a side project related to work on developing lensless implantable systems for imaging brain activity. This type of imaging system could be useful as part of an implantable probe for imaging neurons modified to glow when they are active.
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