The Impact of Snapshot Hyperspectral Cameras Across Industries & Their Game-Changing Applications

Although hyperspectral imagers have been used in a limited number of industries over the decades, this potential is still largely stuck in the lab rather than out in the real world.

Unlocking the Potential of Hyperspectral Imaging

Unfortunately, capturing spatial and spectral information simultaneously is difficult. In fact, traditional approaches don’t truly achieve this. They scan across the scene to capture a single line of pixels at a time across multiple wavelengths (push-broom HSI) or they image a single wavelength at a time for the whole scene (tunable filters HSI). Both of these approaches build up the final hyperspectral data cube by combining many frames.

In contrast, snapshot hyperspectral cameras record all spatial and spectral data in a single frame. Generating a hyperspectral data cube that captures a snapshot in time, without scanning or tuning filters to slowly create the final output. Not only does this enable real-time, video-rate hyperspectral imaging, but it also uses compact and more robust optical designs to produce smaller, portable devices.

The Living Optics Camera is at the cutting edge of next-generation snapshot devices. By combining new compression techniques and advanced optical designs into a small, easy-to-use device, Living Optics is taking hyperspectral technology out of controlled lab conditions. Our game-changing snapshot camera gives engineers and integrators access to live hyperspectral analysis in the field to unlock the technology’s potential and unleash a range of new applications.

How Snapshot Hyperspectral Cameras Work

Snapshot hyperspectral cameras capture a complete hyperspectral data cube in a single exposure. While they rely on complex optical designs and image manipulation, the hardware required is more compact and easier to implement than traditional HSI approaches.

Snapshot HSI captures and focuses incoming light using an objective lens. The camera then manipulates this light to encode spectral and spatial information simultaneously. There are multiple methods of achieving this. The Living Optics camera utilises a coded aperture and dual sensor design that returns:

• A full RGB 2048 x 2432 pixel image
• 96-band hyperspectral data from 4384 points evenly sampled across the image

Combined with a dispersive element, the coded aperture spreads encoded spectral information to one of the sensors. What the sensor captures looks nothing like the scene. Light sampled from across the image has been modulated by the coded aperture and dispersive element, producing a mess of spectral data that looks more like a mosaic or interference pattern.

This encoded spectral data is reconstructed into the wavelength bands from each sampling point using the camera’s software. The reconstruction algorithm is based on compressive sensing and tailored to the optical design of the camera. The final output contains a high spatial resolution RGB image and a lower spatial resolution hyperspectral dataset containing 96 wavelength bands.

The Benefits of Snapshot Hyperspectral Cameras

High Frame Rates

Capturing all of the data in a single acquisition leads to dramatically higher frame rates. Without needing to scan across the image line-by-line or capture successive wavelength bands, snapshot cameras, like the Living Optics Camera, can deliver video-rate hyperspectral data up to 30 frames per second.

This transforms how hyperspectral cameras can be used, leading to entirely new applications capturing time-dependent events, developing high-throughput systems, and enabling real-time decisions based on spectral data. Providing instantaneous feedback also significantly improves the practicalities of deploying spectral imaging technology. Users can quickly calibrate or adapt their experimental set-up based on the data they see without long wait times between outputs.

The benefits of high frame rate snapshot hyperspectral devices include:

• Video-rate spectral frames providing instantaneous data acquisition for live monitoring or high-throughput systems.
• Enhanced data collection efficiency and saving time without having to wait for hyperspectral data cubes that accumulate over many frames
• Keeping pace with real-life dynamic scenes and time-dependent events as they occur, tracking spectral changes in real-time.
• No need for scene stability, the camera can be easily integrated into remote sensing platforms and vehicles without considering how platform motion or positioning affects image capture.
• Eliminating motion blur or artefacts that can cause image distortion or misalignment across wavelength bands or pixels for scanning hyperspectral cameras.
• Utilising hyperspectral data with systems that make real-time decisions based on live feedback.
• Improving the practicalities of data capture with users receiving immediate information for lens focusing, faster whitepoint calibrations, adjusting camera settings, and zooming in on specific areas of interest to return the best possible data.

Portability and Ease of Use

If higher frame rates change how hyperspectral cameras are used, snapshot technology’s increased portability and improved ease of use transform where they can be used and who has access to them. Bringing a technology usually limited to airborne and satellite-based imaging down to earth for ground-based monitoring in the field and handheld use cases.

To operate pushbroom hyperspectral systems on the ground, precise scanning based on complex mechanisms with moving parts is required to build an image. This makes them typically large, bulky, and fragile, unsuitable for most real-world applications. They also need stable, controlled environments, making them much better suited to the lab.

In contrast, snapshot hyperspectral technology enables compact and robust cameras that are lighter and easier to transport and utilise. Users can quickly learn to capture hyperspectral images without in-depth training or specialist knowledge of spectral imaging.

Snapshot camera designs can be simple handheld devices for close-range hyperspectral image capture, bringing the technology to many more fields and allowing engineers and integrators to test their potential.

The benefits of portable and easy-to-use snapshot hyperspectral devices include:

• Compact and sturdy designs that are significantly easier to transport and set up.
• Deployments in the field, bringing hyperspectral technology to real-world applications rather than bringing samples to the lab for controlled experiments.
• Reduced size and weight improve UAV and other mobile platform integration.
• Providing handheld devices for simple image capture without lengthy and controlled experimental set-ups.
• Increased reliability due to less delicate components and reduced mechanical complexity that introduces potential failure points.
• Simplified image capture that allows non-specialists to generate quality hyperspectral datasets.

How These Benefits Enable Applications Across Various Industries

Snapshot hyperspectral systems that capture real-time video and bring the cameras to more environments and users are finally delivering on the promise of the technology. Snapshot HSI can improve upon existing systems to deliver enhanced performance and usability while also enabling entirely new applications not possible with scanning image capture techniques.

Examples of the industries where snapshot hyperspectral cameras can have a major impact include:

Precision Agriculture

Agriculture is an industry ripe with potential HSI applications. Spectral imaging cameras can deliver data to assess plant health metrics and soil quality, enhancing the growing process, optimising resources, and increasing crop yields.

This comes at a time when climate change and an expanding global population are putting major strains on the agricultural industry, leading to food security challenges around the world. Hyperspectral technology could provide the insights needed to transform farming practices and enable smarter decision-making processes that maximise food outputs.

The process of integrating data and technology into farming is referred to as precision agriculture. Examples of how hyperspectral datasets could help improve agricultural efficiency, productivity, and sustainability include:

• Crop health monitoring to track plant growth and inform decisions around resource use (irrigation, fertiliser, pesticides, etc.) and harvest times.
• Disease and pest detection to ensure early, proactive interventions before symptoms are visible to the eye, and there is a greater impact on the crop.
• Improved yield estimates to help farmers plan for the future and track the output of their efforts.
• Automated resource delivery based on feedback from hyperspectral systems to optimise specific plant health metrics and maximise yield.

These applications are only possible with snapshot hyperspectral cameras in the field to provide real-time crop monitoring. Farmers can now deploy high frame-rate, portable HSI on drones and other moving vehicles to gather large-scale surveys of their crops. With spectral data helping them make decisions about their crops, they optimise resource usage and yield to generate more food while reducing costs.

The Living Optics camera is being tested for use in the agriculture industry, including vineyard applications such as quantifying grape sugar levels for optimal harvest times and counting grapes to improve yield estimates.

Quality Control

Quality control is an application where HSI can improve upon existing RGB or multispectral cameras. With portable, cheaper, and faster snapshot cameras, it is now viable to integrate hyperspectral technology and take advantage of higher spectral resolution to ensure quality during manufacturing, food production, and industrial processes.

With high frame rates, snapshot hyperspectral cameras can keep up with fast-moving production lines, monitor time-dependent industrial processes, and deliver enhanced insights to improve accuracy.

Examples of quality control industrial applications using snapshot HSI cameras include:

• Automated production line monitoring to identify issues and trigger sorting machines to reject defective items.
• Food quality control including meat grading for pricing, identifying pathogens or contaminants to prevent recalls, and enhancing shelf life predictions to reduce food waste.
• Quantifying cleanliness and identifying contaminants invisible to the naked eye to guarantee products meet industry standards.
• Ensuring raw materials from vendors meet the required quality at the start of the production process.
• Live monitoring of time-dependent industrial processes such as mixing, casting, cooking, and others.

Healthcare

An active research area where hyperspectral imaging has significant potential is the healthcare industry. HSI can provide a non-invasive method for identifying tissues and tracking spectral signatures related to biological processes without adding contrast agents, using large equipment, or undergoing significant procedures. This leads to potential applications in both diagnostics and treatment, including:

• Skin cancer triage
• Assessing burns
• Early-stage detection of certain diseases such as Alzheimer’s
• Precision surgery
• Tumour resection
• Patient monitoring

With snapshot hyperspectral cameras, healthcare professionals can enhance these applications through real-time analysis and using compact devices. For example, surgeons could have immediate information on tissue classification to ensure the entire tumour is removed while minimising impact on healthy tissue. Doctors could assess burns with a simple handheld camera.

Living Optics is working with researchers from the University of Greenwich to demonstrate our camera’s capabilities in tracking biological changes in a skin surrogate model to diagnose dermatological conditions.

Defence and National Security

Replacing traditional computer vision for defence applications with higher spectral resolution systems requires cameras that can deliver real-time, accurate data in harsh environments when used by non-specialists. This includes high sensitivity to spectral anomalies to provide new insights from a scene when enemy combatants are actively concealing them. Plus, returning meaningful data under different conditions, including poor visibility.

The camera also has to be robust and reliable, with fast readout to capture images on fast-moving platforms. All these factors favour snapshot technology.

Potential defence and national security applications enabled by snapshot HSI include:

• Camouflage detection
• Surveillance and reconnaissance
• Explosive residue identification
• Target tracking

Living Optics Faster, Portable, and Easier to Use Snapshot Hyperspectral Camera

While hyperspectral imaging has been around for a long time, traditional approaches limit how it can be deployed. Thankfully, with the advent of new snapshot imaging techniques, HSI is ready to mature into an invaluable technology across a wide range of industries, including:

• Precision agriculture
• Quality control
• Healthcare
• Defence and national security

By capturing all of the spectral and spatial data simultaneously, snapshot hyperspectral cameras can provide video-rate data for real-time analysis. Plus, with more compact and robust optical designs, snapshot devices allow for greater portability and ease-of-use, making them far more accessible than traditional scanning approaches.

To learn more about snapshot hyperspectral cameras and how Living Optics is at the vanguard of the technology, get in touch with our sales team. We can tell you everything you need to know about our video-rate, compact camera and its advanced software development kit that makes capturing and analysing spectral data as easy as possible.