Technologies continue to improve and are at the point today where a new imaging lens system has been developed that can “gather significantly more color information than the human eye and conventional cameras.” The benefit of this technology is that this could have the potential to enable assisted vehicle driving systems (like the Google driverless car) allow for better ease in identifying counterfeit bills and provide more accurate results for medical imaging.
The imaging system incorporates transverse field detectors (TFDs) that have the ability to capture and decipher up to 36 separate color channels. This technology allowed researchers to capture multispectral images in real time – a boon to the industry.
Because the TFD can extract color information from individual pixels in an image, all without the need for color filters it is a step up from conventional color imaging sensors which are only capable of extracting and detecting information from one of three RGB filters in a pixel. The other colors in the spectrum are “manually applied” using algorithms.
The TFD system allows for individual photons to penetrate at varying depths as predicated on their individual wavelength and color. The photons, being collected at varying depths allows for ease in separating the different channel colors.
Through the multispectral images that were captured with the TDF system, manufacturers are better able to use that information to develop products for remote sensing, military and defense technologies, satellite imaging, robotic vision and assisted or automatic driving devices.
UKA Optics is a manufacturer of standard and custom CCD/CMOS lens assemblies for board and miniature camera applications including digital photography, video conferencing, surveillance, barcode scanning, machine vision and medical systems.