Data from: Optical data compression in time stretch imaging

Time stretch imaging offers real-time image acquisition at millions of frames per second and subnanosecond shutter speed, and has enabled detection of rare cancer cells in blood with record throughput and specificity. An unintended consequence of high throughput image acquisition is the massive amount of digital data generated by the instrument. Here we report the first experimental demonstration of real-time optical image compression applied to time stretch imaging. By exploiting the sparsity of the image, we reduce the number of samples and the amount of data generated by the time stretch camera in our proof-of-concept experiments by about three times. Optical data compression addresses the big data predicament in such systems.

时间拉伸成像（Time Stretch Imaging）可实现每秒数百万帧、亚纳秒快门速度的实时图像采集，已能够以创纪录的检测通量与特异性完成血液中罕见癌细胞的检测。高通量图像采集带来了一项意外后果：该仪器会生成海量数字数据。本文首次通过实验演示了将实时光学图像压缩技术应用于时间拉伸成像系统的方案。在本次概念验证实验中，我们通过利用图像的稀疏性，将时间拉伸相机生成的采样数与数据量缩减至原规模的约1/3。光学数据压缩技术可有效解决此类系统面临的大数据困境。