Depth of Vision

HORIBA Scientific has developed for QuantIC, the UK Quantum Technology Hub in Quantum Enhanced Imaging, Time-Correlated Single-Photon Counting (TCSPC), electronics to support its - research into real-time computational 3D imaging and Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR). This research has the potential to result in faster, better quality and lower-cost 3D imaging for applications that include autonomous vehicles, machine learning, security and surveying. The TCSPC electronics developed for QuantIC is a modified version of HORIBA Scientific's DeltaHub, which is typically used for single-photon Time of Flight (TOF) and counting data acquisition applications in scientific research programmes. For QuantIC's programme, which is based at the University of Glasgow, the Field Programmable Gate Array within a standard DeltaHub was reprogrammed to process 20,000 TOF histograms per second, from which 3D images are derived.‌‌‌‌ Professor Miles Padgett, QuantIC's Principal Investigator and Vice-Principal for Research at the University of Glasgow, said: "The high data acquisition rate of the HORIBA Scientific electronics is the essential component in a single-pixel camera demonstrator we built earlier this year and which, at a range of up 10m, has already produced a 3D depth resolution with millimetric precision. This is an important breakthrough in the development of photon-counting LiDAR." Unlike a conventional camera, where each pixel in the image is measured by a corresponding pixel in the detector, a single-pixel camera uses only one pixel to measure the whole image.