High-throughput Biological Cell Classification Featuring Real-time Optical Data Compression

摘要

High throughput real-time instruments are needed to acquire large data setsfor detection and classification of rare events. Enabled by the photonic timestretch digitizer, a new class of instruments with record throughputs have ledto the discovery of optical rogue waves [1], detection of rare cancer cells[2], and the highest analog-to-digital conversion performance ever achieved[3]. Featuring continuous operation at 100 million frames per second andshutter speed of less than a nanosecond, the time stretch camera is ideallysuited for screening of blood and other biological samples. It has enableddetection of breast cancer cells in blood with record, one-in-a-million,sensitivity [2]. Owing to their high real-time throughput, instruments producea torrent of data - equivalent to several 4K movies per second - that overwhelmdata acquisition, storage, and processing operations. This predicament callsfor technologies that compress images in optical domain and in real-time. Anexample of this, based on warped stretch transformation and non-uniform Fourierdomain sampling will be reported.