The Taub Faculty of Computer Science Events and Talks

Image sensors capable of detecting individual photons are typically used in specialized low-light imaging applications. In this talk I will make a case for using time-resolved single-photon sensors as general-purpose image sensors, not limited to photon-starved scenarios. This may seem counterintuitive. Why would one want to use a single-photon sensor for situations other than imaging in low light? What additional information can a single-photon sensor provide that a conventional camera sensor cannot? I will present two case studies towards answering these questions. First, I will show that the extreme sensitivity and timing resolution of a single-photon sensor can enable 3D time-of-flight cameras that can accurately capture scene depths even in extreme ambient light. Second, I will show that by exploiting the precise inter-photon timing statistics recorded by a single-photon sensor, it is possible to capture 2D intensity images under ambient illumination with unprecedented dynamic range; over 2 orders of magnitude higher than previously thought possible.
Bio: Atul Ingle received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2015. He was a visiting researcher at Philips Healthcare Ultrasound R&D in Andover, MA in 2013 and 2014 and a Research Scientist at Fitbit, Inc. in Boston, MA in 2016-2017. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Departments of Computer Science and Biostatistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests include statistical signal processing and computational imaging.