skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: First-Arrival Differential Counting for SPAD Array Design
We present a novel architecture for the design of single-photon detecting arrays that captures relative intensity or timing information from a scene, rather than absolute. The proposed method for capturing relative information between pixels or groups of pixels requires very little circuitry, and thus allows for a significantly higher pixel packing factor than is possible with per-pixel TDC approaches. The inherently compressive nature of the differential measurements also reduces data throughput and lends itself to physical implementations of compressed sensing, such as Haar wavelets. We demonstrate this technique for HDR imaging and LiDAR, and describe possible future applications.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1730574 1730202
PAR ID:
10493063
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ;
Publisher / Repository:
Sensors
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Sensors
Volume:
23
Issue:
23
ISSN:
1424-8220
Page Range / eLocation ID:
9445
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Abstract To overcome the spatial resolution limit set by aperture-limited diffraction in traditional scanning transmission electron microscopy, microscopists have developed ptychography enabled by iterative phase retrieval algorithms and high-dynamic-range pixel array detectors. Current detector designs are limited by the data rate off chip, so a high-pixel-count detector has a proportionally lower frame rate than the few-segment detectors used for differential phase contrast (DPC) imaging. This slower acquisition speed leads to heightened vulnerability to scan noise, drift, and potential sample damage. This creates opportunities for repurposing fast segmented detectors for ptychography by trading a reduction in reciprocal space pixels for an increase in real space pixels. Here, we explore a strategy of oversampling in real space and instead apply detector pixel upsampling during the reconstruction process. We demonstrate the viability of achieving super-resolution ptychography on thin objects using only 2 × 2 detector pixels, surpassing the resolution of integrated DPC (iDPC) imaging. With optimization using simulated datasets and experiments on MoTe2/WSe2 bilayer moiré superlattices, we achieved super-resolution ptychography reconstructions under rapid acquisition conditions (37.5 pA, 1 μs dwell time), yielding over 50% improvements in contrast and information limit compared to annular dark field and iDPC imaging on the same detectors. 
    more » « less
  2. The CloudPatch-7 Hyperspectral Dataset comprises a manually curated collection of hyperspectral images, focused on pixel classification of atmospheric cloud classes. This labeled dataset features 380 patches, each a 50x50 pixel grid, derived from 28 larger, unlabeled parent images approximately 5000x1500 pixels in size. Captured using the Resonon PIKA XC2 camera, these images span 462 spectral bands from 400 to 1000 nm. Each patch is extracted from a parent image ensuring that its pixels fall within one of seven atmospheric conditions: Dense Dark Cumuliform Cloud, Dense Bright Cumuliform Cloud, Semi-transparent Cumuliform Cloud, Dense Cirroform Cloud, Semi-transparent Cirroform Cloud, Clear Sky - Low Aerosol Scattering (dark), and Clear Sky - Moderate to High Aerosol Scattering (bright). Incorporating contextual information from surrounding pixels enhances pixel classification into these 7 classes, making this dataset a valuable resource for spectral analysis, environmental monitoring, atmospheric science research, and testing machine learning applications that require contextual data. Parent images are very big in size, but they can be made available upon request. 
    more » « less
  3. Abstract The EDGE-CALIFA survey provides spatially resolved optical integral-field unit and CO spectroscopy for 125 galaxies selected from the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area Survey (CALIFA) Data Release 3 sample. The Extragalactic Database for Galaxy Evolution (EDGE) presents the spatially resolved products of the survey as pixel tables that reduce the oversampling in the original images and facilitate comparison of pixels from different images. By joining these pixel tables to lower-dimensional tables that provide radial profiles, integrated spectra, or global properties, it is possible to investigate the dependence of local conditions on large-scale properties. The database is freely accessible and has been utilized in several publications. We illustrate the use of this database and highlight the effects of CO upper limits on the inferred slopes of the local scaling relations between the stellar mass, star formation rate (SFR), and H2surface densities. We find that the correlation between H2and SFR surface density is the tightest among the three relations. 
    more » « less
  4. In this paper, we propose a procedure to analyze lensless single random phase encoding (SRPE) systems to assess their robustness to variations in image sensor pixel size as the input signal frequency is varied. We use wave propagation to estimate the maximum pixel size to capture lensless SRPE intensity patterns such that an input signal frequency can be captured accurately. Lensless SRPE systems are contrived by placing a diffuser in front of an image sensor such that the optical field coming from an object can be modulated before its intensity signature is captured at the image sensor. Since diffuser surfaces contain very fine features, the captured intensity patterns always contain high spatial frequencies regardless of the input frequencies. Hence, a conventional Nyquist-criterion-based treatment of this problem would not give us a meaningful characterization. We propose a theoretical estimate on the upper limit of the image sensor pixel size such that the variations in the input signal are adequately captured in the sensor pixels. A numerical simulation of lensless SRPE systems using angular spectrum propagation and mutual information verifies our theoretical analysis. The simulation estimate of the sampling criterion matches very closely with our proposed theoretical estimate. We provide a closed-form estimate for the maximum sensor pixel size as a function of input frequency and system parameters such that an input signal frequency can be captured accurately, making it possible to optimize general-purpose SRPE systems. Our results show that lensless SRPE systems have a much greater robustness to sensor pixel size compared with lens based systems, which makes SRPE useful for exotic imagers when pixel size is large. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report to investigate sampling of lensless SRPE systems as a function of input image frequency and physical parameters of the system to estimate the maximum image sensor pixel size. 
    more » « less
  5. Our method uses manipulation in video to learn to understand held-objects and hand-object contact. We train a system that takes a single RGB image and produces a pixel-embedding that can be used to answer grouping questions (do these two pixels go together) as well as hand-association questions (is this hand holding that pixel). Rather than painstakingly annotate segmentation masks, we observe people in realistic video data. We show that pairing epipolar geometry with modern optical flow produces simple and effective pseudo-labels for grouping. Given people segmentations, we can further associate pixels with hands to understand contact. Our system achieves competitive results on hand and hand-held object tasks. 
    more » « less