
Ask HN: Camera array for small-volume Real-Time passive surveillance of biology - JabavuAdams
If you want to look at C. elegans (1mm long), you use a microscope. But of course, the field of view is small, and you can&#x27;t just passively surveil a volume of say a few cm^3 and wait to see interesting and possibly unexpected behaviours.<p>Is there anything like this now? I&#x27;m thinking of something similar to wide-area airborne passive surveillance and recording, but for a small area.<p>What would we learn if we could record a room for a night and see every bedbug? Or record a patch of ground and see every ant? Or record a volume or area of a few cm^3&#x2F;cm^2 and see everything down to 1 um resolution? Are there currently microscope arrays?
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dekhn
Many scopes support region of interest detection. They will use a low-power
objective to scan a large field of view, then switch objectives and only look
at regions identified from the larger field of view. This really only works
for things on slides.

You can definitely couple a macro lens to a DSLR and mount it on a turrent and
scan, trading off field of view with time (depends on how fast you can scan,
etc).

There are camera arrays
([http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/array/](http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/array/))
and an experienced practictioner could take these ideas and do all sorts of
amazing imaging.

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JabavuAdams
Great, thanks! Was thinking about COTS image sensors but then the problem
becomes how to get the light to them.

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dekhn
Maybe an array of jevois with NoIR lenses and an IR illuminator
([http://jevois.org/doc/Lenses.html](http://jevois.org/doc/Lenses.html)) with
the jevois doing object detection in array mode over a large FoV, then another
camera with a much nicer macro lens and high quality sensor (blackfly S w/ a
DSLR macro) on a turrent that points to where you see objects of interest
identified by the jevois object detector.

Would be a fun project.

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wnkrshm
Look up Fourier Ptychography, i.e. like this presentation by Guoan Zheng [0].
Fourier Ptychography is basically a variation of Gerchberg-Saxton phase
retrieval in the sense that both methods and their variations reconstruct
images from constraints. In Ptychography for microscopy they come from low-
resolution, small-Field-of-View image captures. You can do superresolution
with it and extend your field of view.

Usually in microscopy, you have a very limited field of view but with the
variations of this method, people have reconstructed multiple square-mm fields
of view with a µm resolution. If you have multiple cameras, you can speed up
the process [1]. This also has been done for volumetric samples with the
ability to refocus.

You'd probably need high speed cameras and coherent illumination (for best
superresolution results).

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hece_x37ITg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hece_x37ITg)
[1]
[http://computationalimaging.rice.edu/databases/towardcca/](http://computationalimaging.rice.edu/databases/towardcca/)

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JabavuAdams
Well, this looks like exactly what I was thinking of...

[http://horstmeyer.pratt.duke.edu/gigapixel-micro-camera-
arra...](http://horstmeyer.pratt.duke.edu/gigapixel-micro-camera-array-
microscope)

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JabavuAdams
Looks like those Duke people have commercialized this as Ramona Optics.

Ramona Optics
[https://www.ramonaoptics.com/company](https://www.ramonaoptics.com/company)

SBIR for High Resolution Parallelized Imaging of Freely Swimming Zebrafish
with a Gigapixel Microscope
[https://www.sbir.gov/sbirsearch/detail/1323251](https://www.sbir.gov/sbirsearch/detail/1323251)

Ramona Optics SBIR info
[https://www.sbir.gov/node/1155319](https://www.sbir.gov/node/1155319)

Others: [https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Wide-field-
microscopy-...](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Wide-field-microscopy-
using-microcamera-arrays-Marks-Youn/ba6efc3e3e18abca7a09116ae72fd84ef74cf959)

[https://www.osa.org/en-
us/about_osa/newsroom/news_releases/2...](https://www.osa.org/en-
us/about_osa/newsroom/news_releases/2015/unprecedented_gigapixel_multicolor_microscope_powe/)

[https://www.osapublishing.org/oe/fulltext.cfm?uri=oe-21-2-23...](https://www.osapublishing.org/oe/fulltext.cfm?uri=oe-21-2-2361&id=248702)

