Active and Passive Optical Imaging System to Reduce Storage and Compression Time

Abstract

UCF researchers have created a hybrid differential optical sensing imager and methods for compressed sensing. This dual-mode novel system uses both active (laser) and passive (ambient) light to intelligently sample the direct image information with a three-dimensional (3-D) spatial frame and four-dimensional (3-D space + 1-D time) sampling. Additionally, this new technique delivers powerful compressed sensed imaging using an electronically agile lens-based sensor. Compared to standard imagers such as CCD devices, the imager also provides adaptive compressed sensing which significantly reduces both memory and computational power needs. This system and method can be used in numerous applications including in medicine, astronomy, and space.

Technical Details
This novel hybrid imaging system includes two image sensor systems. The active image sensor system uses a laser beam to produce a target boundary outline, via a light flooding method, collecting a sparse data set that corresponds to the target boundary outlines. The passive image sensor system uses direct pin-hole spatial optical sampling of the ambient environment light target image. The hybrid combination of these two systems provides increased speed and compression. Further optimization is accomplished by utilizing the Laplacian to adaptively compute sparse data in the dual-mode compressed sensing of the target.

Benefit

Market Application