Metamaterial Apertures for Computational Imaging

Abstract

Compressed Sampling It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. But images often contain a lot of redundant information—effectively creating huge data files of meaningless information. While algorithms can compress the size of a file without loss of information, such processing is done after the picture has been taken. Hunt et al. (p. 310 ) used a metamaterial sensor to compress the sampled scene directly, obviating the need for postprocessing. Tuning the response of the metamaterial allowed imaging of a scene with a 40:1 compression ratio, which may mean that finding that needle in a haystack may be much easier using a metamaterial camera.