LAYERED LENS: To take a gigapixel image, which contains more than 1,000 times the amount of information as a megapixel image, in one snapshot requires a special setup. Here, Columbia University researchers propose a ball-shaped lens, half of which is covered by secondary relay lenses, to capture the entire image with minimal distortion.
Image: COURTESY OF SHREE NAYAR AND OLIVER COSSAIRT, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
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Advances in technology tend to spoil us. PCs just a few years old have nothing on today's smart phones, and, whereas megapixel images were once the state of the art in digital photography, gigapixel images (composed of at least one billion pixels, or picture elements) are beginning to show up on the Web in vivid detail.
Gigapixel images also hold tremendous potential for providing law enforcement and the military with detailed reconnaissance and surveillance information. Long-distance images taken today by satellites or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can capture detail down to a license plate number while flying at altitudes too high for these drones to be spotted from the ground. But these images provide only a narrow view, says Ravi Athale, a consultant to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and a senior principal scientist at MITRE Corp. in McLean, Va. He likens UAV images to seeing a battlefield or city through a "soda straw" and satellite images to an injection needle.
"We are no longer dealing with fixed installations or army tank units or missile silo units,” Athale says. “[Fighting terrorism requires] an awareness of what's going on in a wide area the size of a medium city."
Through its Advanced Wide Field of View Architectures for Image Reconstruction and Exploitation program, DARPA has for the past year been working on ways to develop a camera that can take a gigapixel-quality image in a single snapshot. This approach is novel, given that today's gigapixel images actually consist of several megapixel-sized images pieced together digitally to provide a high level of detail over a large area. This is often done using a long-lens digital single-lens reflex (SLR) camera placed atop a motorized mount. Software controls the movement of the camera, which captures a mosaic of hundreds or even thousands of images that, when placed together, create a single, high-resolution scene that maintains its clarity even when the viewer zooms in on a specific area. DARPA plans to invest $25 million over a three-and-a-half-year period in its program, which includes a component called Maximally scalable Optical Sensor Array Imaging with Computation (MOSAIC).
The single-snapshot approach to gigapixel digital photography has its drawbacks. The equipment is bulky, expensive and complicated. In addition, because it may take several minutes or even hours for the automated camera to shoot all of the individual images required to create the larger mosaic, lighting conditions may change and objects (cars, people, aircraft, etc.) can move into and out of the frames. And stitching together the individual images requires software that must match overlapping points—any errors must be corrected manually.
Such images also require special viewing software found on Google Earth, 360world.eu, Gigapan.org (created by Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University, NASA and Google) and other Web sites that allow gigapixel digital photographs to be uploaded, viewed and shared across the Web.
Nor are gigapixel images conducive to being captured by a compact, inexpensive camera. The digital processors and memory used in today's cameras are ill-equipped to manage gigapixel images, which contain more than 1,000 times the amount of information as megapixel images. (A 10-gigapixel image would take up more than 30 gigabytes of hard drive space.) And although pixels are often used in reference to image resolution, this attribute can truly only be measured by taking into account an image's overall dimensions and the number of pixels per inch or per centimeter. For example, an image that is 20.3 by 25.4 centimeters at 60 pixels per centimeter has the same resolution as an image that is 10.2 by 12.7 centimeters at 120 pixels per centimeter.
Computational photography
A team of Columbia University researchers in New York led by computer science professor Shree Nayar thinks a single snapshot gigapixel camera is possible if they can reduce the complexity of such images. "Rather than thinking about it as capturing the final image, you're capturing the information you would need to compute the final image," Nayar says.
In a paper to be presented at the April IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography (ICCP) in Pittsburgh, the Columbia researchers propose three relatively compact camera designs (two of which they have actually built as prototypes) for single-shot gigapixel imaging—each design relies on a ball-shaped lens and one or more digital sensors. Such a lens is one of the simplest because it has perfect symmetry (leading to fewer aberrations) and consists of one element rather than several lenses that must be configured to work together, says Oliver Cossairt, a Columbia computer science PhD candidate who works with Nayar.
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17 Comments
Add CommentIf I understand correctly, in the example described a motor would be rotating a spherical lens within a sensor housing. This process would reintroduce a delay factor to photography, requiring the subject to remain motionless as the picture is being 'exposed'. Don't move!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just saw the slide show. I'm not sure that all the suggested designs incur any mechanical delay, but the impact for those that do of course depends of the duration of that delay.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe last slide in the show includes an image of a person that appears to be walking. I suspect that the worst case would be for objects that are moving in the same direction as the sensor unit, at proportionally similar speeds. In that case I'd expect to see 'streaking' of those moving objects appearing across multiple pixel exposures.
http://www.gigapxl.org/project.htm
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe photos in the story hardly do justice to the true ability of the technology check it out on there website.
It seems that similar lens/senor positioning methods could be used to produce nanoscale cameras with high, perhaps megapixel, resolution. You know, for those tiny bugs...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKH 11
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf they are reading this the site referenced has a picture labeled "Seattle OR" which of course should be Seattle, WA. I worked with a Rollei close-range photogrammetry system, a medium-format camera, though 35mm was also available, in development as Intel 386 math chips made the process available from a number of photos registered on a large tablet which allowed 3D measurements from software to be obtained from a sequence of photos, (or photo) with the factory documented camera and lens for aberration or distortion. I think this method might aid the science of close-range photogrammetry, where very accurate measurements are needed. Was that pipe on the oil platform, to be replaced, as it was on the "blueprint", or how much needs to be adjusted, or other uses, accidents, preservation. "as-builts" etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGigapixel photography owes much to Dr.Graham Flint (see gigapxl.org & Google him) & the earlier U2 & satellite technology he helped develop & still uses. Newer technology (& eventual lower costs) may make these techniques more widely available in the near future. RBinSC
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA question for consumer applications of a gigapixel photography; where would you archive these photos?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI understand government and spy uses. It's the family reunion that is of concern.
Of course, like the 4MP cameras of a decade ago, progress will happen.
As someone who worked with satellite pictures during the Vietnam War, I find this technology amazing. We had to launch very heavy, low-earth-orbit satellites from Vandenberg AFB, and the film was returned to earth in capsules that were captured in mid-air over the South Pacific. The resolution was breathtaking.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis new methodology, even with its drawbacks, sounds far faster, and as for cost, I do not imagine it is possible for it to be as expensive as a Titan liquid-fuel rocket with multiple solid-fuel strap-on boosters.
A gigabyte picture on an iphone sounds like just the sort of gizmo that technology victims will leap at.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthis is a ver interesting article, thanks
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisalex garza
http://photoshopquickly.com/
You can host and archive gigapixel images now via GigaPan.org (publicly or privately). (disclaimer, I work for GigaPan :-)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a good example: http://gigapan.org/gigapans/67894/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor a project in which we have 10 to 15 seconds to take gigapixel images, and would like to take at least 3 or 4, how much write time does each image take?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo how much do these cameras cost?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere do you Buy these?
Quite amazing, I would assume that the movement of the sensor was similar in speed and function to a focal plane shutter used in many 35 mm cameras, which I find kinda ironic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am also curious how they deal with noise from so many pixels
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