World's fastest camera can shoot at one-trillionth of a second

University of Tokyo and Keio University have collaborated to produce the world’s fastest camera which is 1000 times faster than the existing high-speed cameras. They have used sequentially timed all-optical mapping photography (STAMP) to achieve this.   According to a white paper submitted in nature photonics, the researchers have described the camera thus, “We present a motion-picture camera that performs single-shot burst image acquisition without the need for repetitive measurements, yet with equally short frame intervals (4.4 trillion frames per second) and high pixel resolution (450 × 450 pixels). The principle of this method—‘motion picture femtophotography’—is all-optical mapping of the target’s time-varying spatial profile onto a burst stream of sequentially timed photographs with spatial and temporal dispersion.”   The STAMP camera is able to shoot images at one-trillionth of a second using the optical shutter, which outperforms the current speed of one-billionth of a second which is seen in cameras using mechanical or electronic shutters.   This camera has been under development for the last three years. Researchers have used this camera to capture chemical reactions, conduction of heat and other scenarios which are basically impossible to visualise in the single shot. The joint team of 12 researchers is working on making the camera small enough for practical use in the next couple of years. Currently, it is about one square-meter in size.   The camera is most likely relevant to be used in industrial photography in the auto and semiconductor factories for instance to help develop a better understanding of laser processing. Also in the medical field, the STAMP camera can be used in improving ultrasonic therapy and so on.