US researchers’ HyperCam uses hyperspectral imaging to reveal hidden details in objects

17 Oct 2015

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Hyperspectral imaging finds applications in myriad fields, from helping geologists identify new oil fields or mines and scanning ancient manuscripts and artefacts, to diagnosing potential medical problems, detecting problems in food processing and military surveillance.

University of Washington (UW) and Microsoft Research scientists have developed a camera that uses hyperspectral imaging for capturing images at visible and invisible wavelengths, before combining them together to reveal otherwise-hidden details like veins under skin.

''Existing systems are costly and hard to use, so we chose to create a low-cost hyperspectral camera and explore these uses ourselves'', said Neel Joshi, a Microsoft researcher who worked on the project.

A cheap camera add-on for the user's mobile phone could give users an ''X-ray vision'' that allowed them to check whether fruit was ripe before it was cut.

Due to the fact that the HyperCam can pick up many wavelengths of light, it packs more detail than the average camera, especially when it came to fingerprints.

''It's not there yet, but the way this hardware was built you can probably imagine putting it in a mobile phone'', said Shwetak Patel, Washington Research Foundation Endowed professor of Computer Science & Engineering and Electrical Engineering at University of Washington.

"When you look at a scene with a naked eye or a normal camera, you're mostly seeing colors. You can say, 'Oh, that's a pair of blue pants,' " lead author Mayank Goel said in a statement.

Goel is a UW computer science and engineering doctoral student and Microsoft Research graduate fellow. "With a hyperspectral camera, you're looking at the actual material that something is made of. You can see the difference between blue denim and blue cotton."

Hyperspectral imaging has been around for long and has been in use in industrial applications and in the space program such as in NASA's Airborne Visible / Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS), which can record images across 224 different bands.

The novelty in the latest development is that the Microsoft / UW partnership could eventually produce a camera that was affordable for regular people to buy.

The team that developed the camera said at a presentation at a computer conference in Japan, that the camera would cost about $800, but it might be possible to develop one that worked with a mobile phone camera for just $50.

 

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