Intensity-corrected 4D light-in-flight imaging

Abstract

Light-in-flight (LIF) imaging is the measurement and reconstruction of light's path as it moves and interacts with objects. It is well known that relativistic effects can result in apparent velocities that differ significantly from the speed of light. However, less well known is that Rayleigh scattering and the effects of imaging optics can lead to observed intensities changing by several orders of magnitude along light's path. We develop a model that enables us to correct for all of these effects, thus we can accurately invert the observed data and reconstruct the true intensity-corrected optical path of a laser pulse as it travels in air. We demonstrate the validity of our model by observing the photon arrival time and intensity distribution obtained from single-photon avalanche detector (SPAD) array data for a laser pulse propagating towards and away from the camera. We can then reconstruct the true intensity-corrected path of the light in four dimensions (three spatial dimensions and time).

arXiv comment10 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Computational time-of-flight diffuse optical tomography
• A trillion frames per second: the techniques and applications of light-in-flight photography
• Observation of image pair creation and annihilation from superluminal scattering sources
• Superluminal Motion-Assisted 4-Dimensional Light-in-Flight Imaging
• Slow light in flight imaging