Imaging

Two teams from MIT received a 2017 Wellcome Image Award, “which celebrates colourful and captivating scientific images - from photography and illustration, to super-resolution microscopy and medical scans,” writes the BBC.

Two MIT research teams from the Department of Biological Engineering and IMES were recipients of the 2017 Wellcome Image Awards, which “reward and showcase the best in science image making,” reports Nicola Davis and Eric Hilaire for The Guardian.

Daniel Akst of The Wall Street Journal writes that by bouncing electromagnetic waves off of pages, MIT researchers have developed a way to read closed books. The system could potentially be used also be used to count stacks of money and detect counterfeit currency, Akst explains. 

Prof. Ramesh Raskar has been awarded the Lemelson-MIT prize for his “trailblazing work which includes the co-invention of an ultra-fast imaging camera that can see around corners, low-cost eye-care solutions and a camera that enables users to read the first few pages of a book without opening the cover,” writes Krishna Pokharel for The Wall Street Journal. 

A new device developed by MIT researchers can read the pages of a book without opening the cover, reports Nsikan Akpan for the PBS NewsHour. The tool may “unlock the secrets of old books or ancient texts too fragile to be disturbed by human touch.”

MIT researchers have developed a system that uses terahertz waves to read the pages of a closed book, reports Michael Casey for the AP. Research scientist Barmak Heshmat explains that the system works better than X-rays, as “it can contrast between the blank paper and the part that has ink.”

Writing for CBS News, Charles Choi explores a system developed by MIT researchers that can identify letters in a closed book. The system could be used to examine ancient books or to “scan through large amounts of documents without having to mechanically separate the pages, which could be useful for libraries, banks and others,” says research scientist Barmak Heshmat. 

Salon reporter Scott Eric Kaufman writes that MIT researchers have created a system that can read the pages of a closed book and could be used to examine manuscripts too fragile to handle. “The system works by shooting pulses of radiation from a terahertz camera and measuring how long it takes for them to bounce back." 

MIT researchers have developed a new computational imaging technique that can read closed books, reports G. Clay Whittaker for Popular Science. The technique could be useful for “rare book research, where opening a book may be impossible due to damage, or not worth the risk of damage.”

MIT researchers have developed a microscope that can generate close to real-time images on nanoscale processes, reports Kevin Hartnett for The Boston Globe. The microscope allows “microscopic worlds that had appeared static suddenly leap into motion,” Hartnett explains. 

In this video, BBC Click’s LJ Rich explores how researchers at MIT CSAIL have devised a system that can reconstruct sound from a video recording. “I think what’s really different about this technology is that it provides you with a way to image this information,” says graduate student Abe Davis.

Steven Rosenbaum highlights PhD student Abe Davis’ TED talk in a piece for Forbes. Rosenbaum writes that Davis “has co-created the world’s most improbable audio instrument.”

Rachel Feltman writes for The Washington Post about how MIT researchers have developed new technology that can amplify microscopic movements invisible to the human eye. “MIT researchers recently published a study in which they extracted intelligible audio by analyzing the movements of a nearby bag of chips,” Feltman writes.

Robert J. Szczerba of Forbes reports on how cameras are changing health care, featuring new work from researchers at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. The researchers are developing a new technique to measure heart rate via subtle head movements, Szczerba writes. 

“Researchers from MIT Media Lab’s Tangible Media Group and Fluid Interface Group are working on a project called THAW that allows smartphone cameras to identify what’s happening on another screen and interact with it,” writes Lily Hay Newman for Slate.