- Isis Project No 3268

An imaging method that allows the simultaneous capture of movies and still images on the same detector, without additional memory or bandwith by utilising Temporal Pixel Multiplexing, which can be manufactured from readily available components.

Marketing Opportunity

Major applications are in scientific imaging, security and consumer products. Scientific imaging markets are strong, and high speed imaging devices (kHz+) for science are very costly (£50,000) when compared to high resolution devices.

The digital still camera market is the major application, and the ability to capture both a high resolution still and high-speed movie at the same time will offer considerable advantage. Additionally as the mobile phone gains ever increasing functionality then it also will benefit from this technology. The global image sensing market was estimated at about US$3bn in 2007, and as the replacement market levels off, new imaging methods will not only increase value, but offer significant product differentiation.

The Oxford Invention

Current imaging technology requires users to choose between still and movie capture. Further, high-speed movie capture requires switching to lower spatial resolutions to minimize noise and bandwidth issues. As a result, images and movies captured with current technologies miss a significant part of a scene’s temporal or spatial range.

These issues are solved using the new Oxford development ofTemporal Pixel Multiplexing (TPM) which:

• Captures simultaneously high-resolution images and high-speed image sequences in the same image
• Memory requirements not increased
• Image intensification not required
• Slow scan = low read noise
• Works with any detector technology
• Very flexible (not locked to one resolution)
• Extremely high speeds are possible

Not only can the invention be incorporated in a completely new system, but also it can be manufactured as a modular component to be retrofitted to an existing system.

Patent Status

The Oxford invention is the subject of patent applications, and Isis would like to talk to companies interested in developing this opportunity. Please contact the Isis Project Manager for further details.