Integrated photonic encoder for low power and high-speed image processing.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38802333.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-48099-2 and PMC identifier 11130346.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Modern lens designs are capable of resolving greater than 10 gigapixels, while advances in camera frame-rate and hyperspectral imaging have made data acquisition rates of Terapixel/second a real possibility. The main bottlenecks preventing such high data-rate systems are power consumption and data storage. In this work, we show that analog photonic encoders could address this challenge, enabling high-speed image compression using orders-of-magnitude lower power than digital electronics. Our approach relies on a silicon-photonics front-end to compress raw image data, foregoing energy-intensive image conditioning and reducing data storage requirements. The compression scheme uses a passive disordered photonic structure to perform kernel-type random projections of the raw image data with minimal power consumption and low latency. A back-end neural network can then reconstruct the original images with structural similarity exceeding 90%. This scheme has the potential to process data streams exceeding Terapixel/second using less than 100 fJ/pixel, providing a path to ultra-high-resolution data and image acquisition systems.