David Brady of Duke University published a paper in Nature in 2012 (Brady DJ, Nature 486, 386) on 50 Gigapixel camera. The technology was interesting in that it used small camera’s that were coupled through a big lens. This may be a good strategy to make large cameras rather than depend on major lenses and single chips. This camera was called AWARE-2 and the design was similar to a fly eye with individual cameras and lenses integrated into a larger structure. These pictures can be seen on a website for the curious that describes the camera and the picture formation.
How to look at large Gigapixel images:
To see these large images, different technology is required. One example is the image of a Zebrafish embryo, that is 281 Gigapixel image that was acquired by combining nearly 26,000 images into one section that can be easily seen and distributed on the internet. A lab in Netherlands created a large image by stitching together electron microscopic images and published in FGA Faas, J. Cell Biol,198, 457, 2012. The technology to see this images is dependent on IISImage server that can parse the image and distribute through the website since dedicated viewers that could handle such a large dataset are rare and require incredible computation to display the images. An example of the image can be seen on the authors website.
In the future, there will be many more applications of integration knowledge, sensors and other information into a composite whole world picture. The image below is a link from David Brady website at Duke University.
