Snapshots - Camera Culture News
November 2015

Can You Use Kinect to Detect Cancer Cells?

A new Camera Culture paper by  Ayush  Bhandari, Christopher Barsi and Ramesh Raskar in 
Optica  entitled  Blind and Reference-free Fluorescence Lifetime Estimation via Consumer Time-of-Flight Sensors , outlines a novel, cost-effective solution for fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLI). 

Fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLI) is a well established imaging parameter that finds important applications across several areas of life sciences. Examples include DNA sequencing, malignant tumor detection and super-resolution microscopy. Generally, FLI is performed using sophisticated electro-optical instruments which are expensive and cost in the range of several thousands of dollars. This work shows that it is possible to trade-off the precision in electro-optical instruments with sophistication in computational methods used for lifetime estimation purposes. To this end, the authors repurpose low-cost, time-of-flight or ToF sensors (such as the Microsoft Kinect) for FLI.  Read the paper  HER E



Learn More about this Technology at MIT NEWS:
Biomedical imaging at one-thousandth the cost


We are hiring post docs, tech assistants and engineers.  



The ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) which focuses on human computer interaction interfaces was held Charlotte, North Carolina November 8 -11.   Ramesh Raskar delivered the keynote on Extreme Computational Imaging. "ACM has special interest groups on computer-human interaction (SIGCHI) and computer graphics (SIGGRAPH), UIST brings together people from diverse areas, including graphical & web user interfaces, tangible & ubiquitous computing, virtual & augmented reality, multimedia, new input & output devices, and CSCW."

Terahertz Imaging for Art Inspection
Albert Redo Sanchez Presented at Sightlines

On October 14, Albert Redo-Sanchez presented his recent work in Terahertz imaging for art inspection at the Sightlines event organized by the Harvard Digital Futures Consortium. At this event, different technologies were presented for 2D and 3D imaging of cultural heritage objects, including multi-spectral imaging and virtual and augmented reality.

Learn more about Sightlines HERE.

Save the Date - Emerging Worlds Buildathons in India in Collaboration with REDx
January 23-29


MIT Media Lab researchers will return to Mumbai and Na shik, India to run Emerging Worlds buildathons in collaboration with REDx . The Mumbai buildathon focuses on health t ech innovation  for the Emerging Worlds, and the Kumbhathon initiative in Nashik has a Smart Citizens focus.

Interested applican ts can apply online and follow the prompt from Professor Ramesh Raskar: "To impact the next 5 billion people, novel solutions will require a multidisciplinary approach. We know that innovators are not necessarily entrepreneurs when it comes to  global health innovation. By 'designing in context' and co-locating technology and clinical talent, we have shown that creative thinking and real world impact are brought closer together. We intend to address and solve pressing challenges in the developing world. We are literally Innovating for Billions!"

Contact Maggie Church for more information


How will Billions of Cameras Change our World?
An Interview with Barmak Heshmat
 
In his TEDx talk from December 2014 entitled
The Future of Imaging, Barmak speculated what the future will hold for billions of user-friendly cameras and massive collections of images.  Follow up with Barmak as he expands on his visions in an interview with TEDx Beacon Street .

EyeNetra Shipping Units Worldwide

Camera Culture spinout EyeNetra has started shipping units worldwide.  The technology is based on our Siggraph 2010 paper of EyeNetra: refraction on mobile phones that uses a shack hartmann wavefront mechanism.  The company is shipping hundreds of units over the next few days. 

Learn about EyeNetra HERE   
View the Facebook album HERE


Eastern Analytical Symposium on Art Inspection

On November 16th, Albert Redo-Sanchez chaired the session "Terahertz and Allied Methods for Cultural Heritage" at the Eastern Analytical Symposium. This session presented the latest research updates about the application of terahertz technology for art and cultural heritage inspection. 

More information about the symposium HERE.

We are hiring post docs, tech assistants and engineers.