Pixels of Interest (POI) empowered higher speed CAOS camera imaging and spectrometry for multi-target applications

Designed and demonstrated for the first time is Pixels of Interest (POI) centric camera design empowered higher speed, better computational efficiency, Coded Access Optical Sensor (CAOS) time–frequency Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)-mode imaging versus the classic Hadamard (H) spatial transform-based imaging. The showcased CAOS camera is highly suited for faster tracking of multiple distributed targets within a large pixel count full Field of View (FOV) over a full multi-band optical spectrum. A demonstration white light experiment with 3 different shaped targets distributed in a 16384 pixels full FOV shows an 6.12 times faster CAOS imaging operation versus Hadamard Transform (HT)-imaging with a CAOS POI frame update time of 143.4 ms. An additional experiment using 3 similar shaped white light targets with different brightness values also demonstrates the CAOS CDMA-mode speed advantage. Potential areas of use are multi-target tracking in manufacturing, microscopy, security such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles based surveillance, air traffic monitoring, and astronomy. Apart from imaging applications, the CAOS CDMA-mode is also suited for higher speed spectrometry across a broad optical spectrum with distributed discrete targeted spectral lines.