Imaging

Access our comprehensive library of technical briefs on imaging, from engineering experts at NASA and major government, university, and commercial laboratories.

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Briefs: Propulsion

NASA is preparing for the next generation of CubeSats that are propelled and will make directional maneuvers. The new gimbal mount provides a seat for the motor, and controls the position of the...

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Briefs: Imaging

High-speed images of a common laser-based metal 3D printing process, coupled with newly updated computer models, have revealed the mechanisms behind material redistribution, a phenomenon that...

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Briefs: Photonics/Optics

Researchers have found a versatile workaround to create chemical compounds that could prove useful for medical imaging and drug development. While studying chemical...

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Briefs: Energy

It's difficult to see the details of atomic and topographical changes that lead to battery failure. However a team of researchers developed a method to see reactions leading to...

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Briefs: Imaging
Additive Manufacturing Unique Serialization

Current methods of identifying a unique part involve adding a unique serial number to the part. There are many reasons that manufactured parts receive a serial number. They enable traceability of a part throughout its lifecycle, and ensure the part is not a counterfeit; however, labels and stamped...

Briefs: Imaging
MorphoHawk Mathematic Morphology Software for Image and Data Analysis

Computers and automated systems have accelerated productivity and improved quality and reliability for nearly everything, and are destined to take on increasing roles as time moves on. One major limiting factor for automated systems is their inability to categorize and...

Briefs: Imaging
New Optics See More with Less

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center has developed a technology that combines a panoramic refracting optic (PRO) lens with a unique detection system to acquire a true 360-degree field of view. Although current imaging systems can acquire panoramic images, they must use up to five cameras to obtain the full field of...

Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition

Time of flight is an approach that gauges distance by measuring the time it takes light projected into a scene to bounce back to a sensor. In time-of-flight imaging, a short burst of light is fired...

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Briefs: Imaging
Color-Changing Surface Tunable Through Electrical Voltage

Video screens are made up of hundreds of thousands of pixels that display different colors to form the images. With current technology, each of these pixels contains three subpixels — one red, one green, and one blue. A new method was developed to tune the color of the subpixels. The...

Briefs: Imaging

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a high-resolution live imaging technique that can be used for early detection of retinal diseases such as age-related macular degeneration,...

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Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Dual-Field-of-View Multiband Optics

Multi-spectral-band systems are steadily emerging as a desired feature in a camera system. Each spectral band offers different image characteristics. Shorter-wavelength spectral bands provide the potential for better resolution due to the smaller impact of diffraction on the size of the optics blur. This means...

Briefs: Imaging
Stereoscopic Imaging in Hypersonic Boundary Layers Using Planar Laser-Induced Fluorescence

Stereoscopic time-resolved visualization of three-dimensional structures in a hypersonic flow was performed for the first time in NASA Langley Research Center’s 31-inch Mach 10 Air Tunnel. Nitric oxide (NO) was seeded into hypersonic boundary layer flows...

Briefs: Imaging

Doctors currently rely on external ultrasound probes, combined with pre-operative imaging scans, to visualize soft tissue and organs during minimally invasive procedures, as the miniature surgical...

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Briefs: Imaging

Currently there is no reliable way to determine, during tumor-removal surgery, whether the excised tissue is completely cancer-free at its margins — the proof that...

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Briefs: Software
Data Compression and Pattern Recognition Software for Hypersensor Data

Historically, there have been various approaches to problems relating to the detection of small, weak, or hidden objects, substances, or patterns embedded in complex backgrounds. One approach has been to use low-dimensional sensor systems that attempt to detect a clean...

Briefs: Imaging

A large-area detector without any dead space capable of handling a large dynamic range does not currently exist. Current large-area detectors have dead zones created by abutting several modules...

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Briefs: Imaging
Image-Based User Authentication

In other user authentication systems, a user authenticates identity by selecting a particular image that is then matched to a previous choice. This invention enables greater security for access control systems by combining facial recognition technology with a user authentication question.

Briefs: Imaging

Fine-grained human motion tracing — the ability to trace the trajectory of a moving human hand or leg, or even the whole body — is a general capability that is useful in a wide variety of...

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Briefs: Imaging

Moving target indication (MTI) methodologies are essential tools to detect, locate, recognize, and track the moving targets of interest in a movie or video sequence. Different MTI methodologies can be...

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Briefs: Imaging

WiFi signals are everywhere. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones) are expected to become a larger part of everyday life. A new methodology was developed for high-resolution,...

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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping

A number of instruments have been built to obtain range images — a two-dimensional array of numbers that gives the depth of a scene along many directions from a central point in the instrument. Instead of measuring...

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News: Imaging

NASA's Langley Research Center has developed an aircraft-based turbulence and vortex detection system. Turbulence and vortices in the front-flight path are very dangerous for...

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Briefs: Imaging

NASA's Langley Research Center has built a very small spectrometer by integrating a differential linear Fresnel lens onto an imaging chip. NASA is using the lens/chip in a very...

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Briefs: Imaging

In dark environments, it is often difficult to get a clear, high-quality image. To address this problem, a method was developed for spherically curving the flat image sensors...

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Briefs: Imaging

Researchers use fluorescent imaging to locate proteins and other molecules in cells and tissues by tagging the molecules with dyes that glow under certain kinds of light — the...

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Briefs: Medical

The Micro-ring resonator detector can determine the speed of blood flow and the oxygen metabolic rate at the back of the eye. This information could help diagnose such common and...

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Briefs: Imaging
Microstructural Explorations Inside Fuel Cells

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), a promising technology that can efficiently produce energy using fossil fuels with no moving parts and low emissions, present a particularly perplexing economic challenge: current systems operate at maximum efficiency between 700 and 1000 degrees Celsius, but such...

Briefs: Photonics/Optics

After more than 16 years of operation, NASA’s Earth Observing–1 (EO-1) spacecraft was decommissioned on March 30 of this year. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) developed by...

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Briefs: Imaging

NASA’s Langley Re search Center has developed Scintillating Quantum Dots for Imaging X-rays (SQDIX) technology that enables the creation of x-ray detectors that are more...

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