Time-gating technique sees through deep tissue, dense fog, and other obstacles
From helping doctors detect cancer to guiding self-driving cars through traffic, many modern imaging systems rely on near-infrared light, producing a crisp picture when visible light would scatter and yield a blurry picture. But near-infrared systems struggle when light passes through materials like deep tissue or dense fog, succumbing to the same scattering effect in which photons deviate from…
Researchers at the University of Rochester have developed a cost-effective imaging system that can see through deep tissue, dense fog, and other obstacles. This breakthrough, detailed in a paper published in Nature Communications, leverages a technique called time-gating to convert near-infrared light into visible light, allowing for clear images even when traditional methods struggle.
The system's ultrafast light bursts serve as a shutter, only allowing infrared photons to pass through for a microscopic fraction of a second. This process, essentially a camera's shutter controlled by light, enables the conversion of near-infrared light to visible light, producing high-quality images in real-time.
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