Israeli Startup Democratizes Hyperspectral Imaging

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www.eetimes.eu, Oct. 05, 2021 – 

Cameras are critical components of the drive to enable the autonomy and increase the safety of vehicles, drones, and robots. Near-infrared (NIR) cameras are rapidly enhancing machine-vision capabilities and are essential to a range of inspection applications. Israeli startup Unispectral says it has developed a solution that includes a miniature tunable NIR filter and image-processing software to turn any low-cost IR camera into a hyperspectral camera.

Promising startups pop up every day, and it is not always easy to spot them, especially when they emerge several thousand kilometers away. Alissa Fitzgerald, founder of microelectromechanical-system design and development house A.M. Fitzgerald and Associates, brought Unispectral (Tel Aviv) to EE Times Europe's attention. The startup was noteworthy, Fitzgerald said, because it had "released a spectral camera suitable for the mass market, and the MEMS technology makes this product smartphone-sized instead of a tabletop instrument." An interview with Ariel Raz, Unispectral co-founder and CEO, soon followed.

Admittedly, there are plenty of spectral cameras today, but they are large, complex, expensive and suitable for high-end equipment in labs. Unispectral's goal has been to develop high-end spectral cameras accessible for the mass market.

Higher-dimensional color space

Human color vision is trichromatic. Every color we see is the product of signals generated by solely three types of photoreceptor cells in the retina. Our vision is thus organized into – and limited to – a three-dimensional color space.

Now imagine a device, such as a smartphone, that could extend human vision into a high-dimensional color space.

Think of all the hidden information that could surface and play a critical role in our daily lives. One way of doing that is hyperspectral imaging.

Unispectral says it has developed a new concept of a tunable Fabry–Pérot NIR filter. Its design mounts an array of vapor-coated mirrors on a MEMS assembly. With controlled changes of the voltage applied on the upper mirror holder, the optical cavity changes to allow only a desired IR wavelength to pass.

Peleg Levin, CTO of Unispectral, explained the concept at an IEEE MEMS Conference. "In our design, we have a movable mirror that has one set of electrodes and another set of electrodes that are exterior to the optical gap," said Levin.

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