Temporally Coded Exposure Camera for High-Speed Feedback of Microscopic 3D Information

We proposed and developed a temporally coded exposure (TeCE) camera that can carry out multiple exposures at arbitrary timing and accumulate photoelectrons generated by the multiple exposures in a single frame in order to feedback microscopic 3D information at high speed. The TeCE camera can capture a different plane in each frame in synchronization with a high-speed variable-focus lens, called a tunable acoustic gradient index (TAG) lens, because the TeCE camera can extract a particular focal plane from the TAG lens by synchronizing the short exposure control with the focus changing frequencyof the TAG lens. This allows the TeCE camera to acquire microscopic 3D information from different focal planes. To verify the effectiveness of the TeCE camera, an experiment involving feedback of 3D structure of a microscopic object was conducted. The experimental results showed that the TeCE camera could achieve high-speed 3D measurement and good feedback control.