(NCoM) Nanophotonic Compressive iMaging: On-chip Compressive, Lensless, Light-field and Hyper-spectral Sensors

Abstract

ABSTRACT The rapidly growing size and complexity of the imaging datasets is quickly overwhelming our ability to transmit, store and process this data without compression. Accordingly, research efforts have intensified to identify methods to efficiently capture and compress complex data sets. One emerging method known as Compressive Sensing (CS) can compress sparse data sets directly during data acquisition. Compared to methods that implement acquisition and compression in separate stages, CS can be use to create acquisition systems with reduced size, weight, power, and cost (SWAPC). The reduced SWAPC of CSbased nano-photonic devices would enable on-chip imaging capabilities such as lens-free cameras, lightfield cameras and hyper-spectral cameras. If realized, these advances would revolutionalize imaging and situational awareness in the battlefield, providing a significant strategic benefit to our military. The equipment provided from this DURIP will be integrated with current research infrastructure to create a streamlined system to develop and test miniaturized nanophotonic devices that will implement Nanophotonic Computational iMaging (NCoM). Combining these nanophotonic on-chip imaging devices with the rich mathematical tools of compressive sensing will fuel a new research field based on co-designing hardware and algorithms to produce novel imaging capabilities at reduced SWAPC constraints. In addition, the proposed instruments will greatly enhance both undergraduate and graduate education/research at Rice University by exposing a new generation of students to this highly interdisciplinary research. Furthermore these chip-scale devices could have important economic impact by penetrating the commercial markets for imaging devices in consumer imaging, medical imaging, bioimaging, security, astronomy and other applications. To develop nanoscale devices for CS we need new tools that will support the fabrication, testing and characterization of NCoM performance: (a) a confocal microscope to characterize the on-chip fabricated sensors, (b) a super-continuum laser for spectral characterization, (c) a light-field sensor and (d) dedicated NCoM workstations for computational reconstruction.

Document Details

Document Type
DoD Grant Award
Publication Date
Aug 12, 2016
Source ID
N000141512878

Entities

People

  • Jacob T Robinson

Organizations

  • Office of Naval Research
  • Rice University
  • United States Navy

Tags

Readers

  • Distributed Systems and Data Platform Development
  • Image Processing and Computer Vision.
  • Integrated Circuit Design and Technology.

Technology Areas

  • Biotechnology
  • Directed Energy