Biologically-inspired offset array camera for ultrafast imaging

Abstract

High-speed imaging provides an opportunity to access detailed information in various biomedical fields. Recently, some researches have been done to make compact high-speed imaging system inspired by compound eye structure of an insect. However, conventional high-speed compound eye cameras still suffer from slow framerates or difficulty to resolve dense information. This study presents a compact ultrafast camera by combining a compound eye camera inspired by the nature insect with an offset array. OFAC is packaged within 10.4 × 8.3 × 1.5 mm$^3$ excluding image sensor boards, and successfully resolves high-temporal image sequences upto 91,200 framerate. The proposed ultrafast compound eye camera will provide new methods to approach miniaturized high-speed biomedical imaging.