Innovative meta optical devices enhance thermal imaging applications

Scientists have created a novel technology using meta optical devices to conduct thermal imaging. Like a pair of glasses, this device does thermal imaging and can also identify the objects being imaged. This expands the potential applications of thermal imaging in various fields, including security, thermography, medical imaging, and remote sensing.

“Our method overcomes the challenges of traditional spectral thermal imagers, which are often bulky and delicate due to their reliance on large filter wheels or interferometers,” Zubin Jacob, research team leader from Purdue University. The scientists demonstrated that their new system can work with a regular thermal camera to identify different materials accurately.

This is usually hard for normal thermal cameras. The method's capability to recognize temperature differences and identify materials using specific signatures could improve safety and efficiency in various applications, like navigation—a big win for autonomous driving. How did they create this device? Devices used for night vision, machines that "see" and interpret visual information, need spectro polarimetric imaging in the long wave infrared.

However, the current devices that use this technology are quite big and have limitations. They are not as compact as we would like, and they struggle to provide detailed information about the colors and angles of the things they are looking at. So, the researchers wanted to make it smaller, more efficient, and capable of capturing more detailed information.

They created a tiny spinning gadget like a miniature tool that spins around and helps see even more in the dark. They crafted it with this special material thinner than a strand of hair large area metasurfaces that can manipulate light. “We combined meta optical devices and cutting edge computational imaging algorithms to create a system that is both compact and robust while also having a large field of view,” added Jacob.

Three times more efficient To test how well it works, they wrote "Purdue" using different materials, each having unique properties regarding how they interact with heat. The new system accurately identified and distinguished between these different materials and structures. The researchers revealed that the new system was three times better at correctly classifying the materials than the traditional methods.

“Once we achieve real time video capture, the technology could significantly enhance scene perception and overall safety,” added Xueji Wang, the paper’s first author. The was published in the journal ..