Ultrafast, light-sensitive video cameras are needed for observing high-speed events such as shockwaves, communication between living cells, neural activity, laser surgery and elements of blood analysis. To catch such elusive moments, a camera must be able to capture millions or billions of images continuously with a very high frame rate. Conventional cameras are simply not up to the task.

Researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed a novel, continuously running camera that captures images roughly a thousand times faster than any existing conventional camera.

One of the applications he envisions for the camera is flow cytometry, a technique used for blood analysis. Traditional blood analyzers can count cells and extract information about their size, but they cannot take pictures of every cell because no camera is fast and sensitive enough for the job. At the same time, images of cells are needed to distinguish diseased cells from healthy ones. Today, pictures are taken manually under a microscope from a very small sample of blood.

But what if you needed to detect the presence of very rare cells that, although few in number, signify the early stages of a disease? Circulating tumor cells are a perfect example. Typically, there are only a handful of them among a billion healthy cells; yet these cells are precursors to metastasis, the spread of cancer that causes about 90 percent of cancer mortalities.

"The chance that one of these cells will happen to be on the small sample of blood viewed under a microscope is negligible," Jalali said. "To find these rogue cells — needles in the haystack — you need to analyze billions of cells, the entire haystack. Ultra-high-speed imaging of cells in flow is a potential solution for detection of rare abnormal cells."

The new imager operates by capturing each picture with an ultrashort laser pulse — a flash of light only a billionth of a second long. It then converts each pulse to a serial data stream that resembles the data in a fiber optic network rather than the signal coming out of a camera. Using a technique known as amplified dispersive Fourier transform, these laser pulses, each containing an entire picture, are amplified and simultaneously stretched in time to the point that they are slow enough to be captured with an electronic digitizer.

The UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, established in 1945, offers 28 academic and professional degree programs, including an interdepartmental graduate degree program in biomedical engineering. Ranked among the top 10 engineering schools at public universities nationwide, the school is home to six multimillion-dollar interdisciplinary research centers in space exploration, wireless sensor systems, nanotechnology, nanomanufacturing and nanoelectronics, all funded by federal and private agencies.

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