Compared to an
image taken with a normal camera (left), HyperCam images (right) reveal detailed
vein and skin
texture patterns that are unique to each individual. University of Washington
(October 16, 2015) Peering
into a grocery store bin, it’s hard to tell if a peach or tomato or avocado is
starting to go bad underneath its skin.
But an affordable camera technology being developed by the
University of Washington and Microsoft Research might enable consumers of the
future to tell which piece of fruit is perfectly ripe or what’s rotting in the
fridge.
The team of computer science and electrical engineers
developed HyperCam, a lower-cost hyperspectral camera that uses both visible
and invisible near-infrared light to “see” beneath surfaces and capture unseen
details. This type of camera is typically used in industrial applications and
can cost between several thousand to tens of thousands of dollars.
In a paper presented at the UbiComp 2015 conference, the
team detailed a hardware solution that costs roughly $800, or potentially as
little as $50 to add to a mobile phone camera. They also developed intelligent
software that easily finds “hidden” differences between what the hyperspectral
camera captures and what can be seen with the naked eye.
HyperFrames taken
with HyperCam predicted the relative ripeness of 10 different fruits with 94
percent accuracy,
compared with only 62 percent for a typical (RGB) camera.
University of Washington
When HyperCam captured images of a person’s hand, for
instance, they revealed detailed vein and skin texture patterns that are unique
to that individual. That can aid in everything from gesture recognition to
biometrics to distinguishing between two different people playing the same
video game.
As a preliminary investigation of HyperCam’s utility as a
biometric tool, in a test of 25 different users, the system was able
differentiate between hand images of users with 99 percent accuracy.
HyperCam is a
low-cost hyperspectral camera developed
by UW and Microsoft Research that reveals details
that are difficult
or impossible to see with the naked eye.University of Washington
In another test, the team also took hyperspectral images of
10 different fruits, from strawberries to mangoes to avocados, over the course
of a week. The HyperCam images predicted the relative ripeness of the fruits
with 94 percent accuracy, compared with only 62 percent for a typical camera.