Novel imaging concept

Boffins in the UK have come up with a clever way to avoid spending money on ultra-fast imaging hardware: use multiple regular cameras but rather than have them trigger simultaneously, arrange for a very small delay between the trigger of each.

The goal of this work, carried out at the University of Oxford, was to permit monitoring of a mouse heartbeat, but it must surely have many applications in machine vision.

I picked up on the story from BioPhotonics magazine, “Synchronized image capture gets to the heart of the matter,” (what a pun!) but they reference a paper published in Nature Methods (February 2010.) I think you’ll need to pay for a subscription to read it.

As a little aside, I find it fascinating how the British approach is to find a less expensive way to solve a problem. I know universities there struggle constantly with funding issues whereas the US approach seems to be to find a corporate partner willing to fund the biggest, fastest, and most expensive research toys, sorry, tools, that money can buy.

I wonder which approach gives the biggest bang for the buck?