Where photographers look for better lenses, scientists have created a lensless camera that is able to generate 3D images from a single 2D image in high resolution.

Researchers from University of California created this camera that they named as the ‘DiffuserCam’. The team demonstrated that the DiffuserCam can recreate 3D pixels from one 1.3MP image without any lenses. Though the camera itself uses cheap hardware, the software used to make the camera work properly is pretty difficult.

Laura Waller, the lead researcher explained, “We made a concerted effort to keep the hardware extremely simple and inexpensive. Although the software is very complicated, it can also be easily replicated or distributed, allowing others to create this type of camera at home.”

Engineers create a paper-thin camera with no lens

Originally the camera would be used for observing microscopic neuron activity in living mice. Because of its light weight and no lenses, the camera can be easily attached to a transparent window inside a mouse’s skull. This will help researchers match the mouse’s behavior and detect brain activity, reported Futurism. However, the DiffuserCam is intended to be used for larger things such as to create implanted neural interfaces, which can heal visual or hearing problems.

Apart from the brain, the camera can be used in other fields too, including self-driving vehicles. The camera can allow the vehicles to use recorded 3D data to better sense the environment. The DiffuserCam can also assist machine learning in order to detect people and faces along with recognizing and classifying objects with no human input. According to Waller, the lensless camera is also beneficial for medical usage as it can better understand sensory perception and can be used for diagnosis and treatment of various diseases including Alzheimer’s, according to Science Daily.

“The DiffuserCam can, in a single shot, capture 3D information in a large volume with high resolution. We think the camera could be useful for self-driving cars, where the 3D information can offer a sense of scale, or it could be used with machine learning algorithms to perform face detection, track people or automatically classify objects.

“This is a very powerful direction for imaging, but requires designers with optical and physics expertise as well as computational knowledge,” said Waller.