Smartphones To Produce High-Resolution 3D Images
WASHINGTON: Want a quick 3-D copy of an object? It may be as simple as taking a snapshot from your smartphone!
Researchers have developed a cheap and highly accurate imager that may be incorporated in smartphones to help produce a 3D replica of an object within minutes.
3-D imaging has been around for decades, but the most sensitive systems generally are too large and expensive to be used in consumer applications.
The new compact device known as a nanophotonic coherent imager (NCI) promises to change that.
Using an inexpensive silicon chip less than a millimetre square in size, the NCI provides the highest depth-measurement accuracy of any such nanophotonic 3-D imaging device.
"Each pixel on the chip is an independent interferometer - an instrument that uses the interference of light waves to make precise measurements - which detects the phase and frequency of the signal in addition to the intensity," said Ali Hajimiri from the California Institute of Technology.
The new chip utilises an established detection and ranging technology called LIDAR, in which a target object is illuminated with scanning laser beams.
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