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Matthew O’Toole: Imaging the World One Photon at a Time | CMU RI Seminar


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08 September 2018



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Abstract: “The heart of a camera and one of the pillars for computer vision is the digital photodetector, a device that forms images by collecting billions of photons traveling through the physical world and into the lens of a camera. While the photodetectors used by cellphones or professional DSLR cameras are designed to aggregate as many photons as possible, I will talk about a different type of sensor, known as a SPAD, designed to detect and timestamp individual photon events. By developing computational algorithms and hardware systems around these sensors, we can perform new imaging feats, including the ability to (1) image the propagation of light through a scene at trillions of frames per second, (2) form dense 3D measurements from extremely low photon counts, and (3) reconstruct the shape and reflectance of objects hidden from view.”




John Payne


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