The Next Step in Digital Imaging

[Recusant]

Eric Fossum, the inventor of the CMOS imaging chip used in digital cameras and some other technologies, has come up with an even more sensitive technology for creating digital images.

"Super Sensitive Sensor Sees What You Can't" | NPR

A team of engineers at Dartmouth College has invented a semiconductor chip that could someday give the camera in your phone the kind of vision even a superhero would envy.

The new technology comes from Eric Fossum, a professor of engineering and his colleagues at Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering.

This isn't the first imaging technology Fossum has worked on. Twenty-five years ago, while working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he invented CMOS image sensor technology.

"There's about 4 billion cameras made every year with that CMOS image sensor technology," Fossum says.

The CMOS sensor chip turns light into electrical signals that can be processed to form digital images.

Fossum calls his new technology QIS, for Quanta Image Sensor. Instead of pixels, QIS chips have what Fossum and his colleagues call "jots." Each jot can detect a single particle of light, called a photon.

"What this chip can do because it's sensitive to single photons is it can see in the dimmest possible light," Fossum says.

[Continues . . .]

[Davin]

That sounds awesome. I'd love to have a camera that works like that.

[Dave]

Another giga-quantum leap!

Wonder if a collection of a specific number of photons from a single location is a "tittle". . .

[joeactor]

One photon is pretty sensitive.

My wife's been using a new camera, the Light 16.
It has 16 lenses and sensors. Up to 10 fire on any shot.
The software does some amazing things with changing focus and light levels.

[Dave]

One photon is pretty sensitive.

My wife's been using a new camera, the Light 16.
It has 16 lenses and sensors. Up to 10 fire on any shot.
The software does some amazing things with changing focus and light levels.

Hey, looks like a cool tool there!

Tried to check the UK price, not on Amazon yet.

Er, seeing the US price . . . Think I'll give it a miss! They usualy just translate $ directly to £.

[joeactor]

One photon is pretty sensitive.

My wife's been using a new camera, the Light 16.
It has 16 lenses and sensors. Up to 10 fire on any shot.
The software does some amazing things with changing focus and light levels.

Hey, looks like a cool tool there!

Tried to check the UK price, not on Amazon yet.

Er, seeing the US price . . . Think I'll give it a miss! They usualy just translate $ directly to £.

Yeah, the retail on that was pretty pricey. We got an early backer discount, plus another special discount... Still a bit buggy on the software side, but really cool pictures.