At TEDGlobal back in June, Ramesh Raskar, an MIT professor, described an innovative kind of photography he calls “femto-photography”. Femto-photography uses special cameras that can capture images at trillions of frames per second- so fast that one can observe the movement of light through a medium. But, femto-photography is far more useful than just for creating stunning works of art. Because of the extremely sensitive and sophisticated circuitry inside this kind of cameras, Raskar and his team have been able to turn them into cameras that can look around corners.
This amazing technology could have limitless applications in car navigation, rescue planning, and robotics, and Raskar thinks femto-photography could also become the next new medical imaging modality. He envisions a new type of endoscope that won’t traverse your arteries or colon like a snake, but will snap pictures from a single point in the body, utilizing femto-photography to peer around the various folds and spaces.
More info from MIT Media Lab: CORNAR: Looking Around Corners using Femto-Photography…