Revolutionary digital cameras to see in gigapixels

Washington, Oct 2 (ANI): A Duke University scientist will soon be developing futuristic digital cameras that could capture images in giga or even terapixels.

Working with the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, David Brady is designing and building a camera that could achieve resolutions 1,000 or even 1 million times greater than the technology on the market today.

And Brady has said that his goal to reach giga or terapixels is currently being held back by the difficulty of designing a spherical lens that will not distort small areas of a scene.

He not only wants to modify the shape of the camera lens, making it aspherical, but to link together thousands of microcameras behind the main lens too.

Each of these cameras would have its own lens optimised for a small portion of the field of view.

"Now, when you use a camera, you're looking through a narrow soda straw. These new cameras will be able to capture the full view of human vision," said Brady.

And his three-year project would result in a device about the size of a breadbox.

However, Brady is hoping to scale the technology down to create a single-lens reflex camera with a resolution of 50 gigapixels.

Brady presented his innovative technology at the Optical Society's (OSA) Annual Meeting, Frontiers in Optics (FiO) in San Jose, Calif. (ANI)