Tiny, Lens-Free Camera Could Hide in Clothes, Glasses

The lens-free camera is so thin it could be embedded anywhere

"The beauty of this thing is that we create images without any mechanical movement,"

A tiny, paper-thin camera that has no lens could turn conventional photography on its head, according to new research.

The device, a square that measures just 0.04 inches by 0.05 inches (1 by 1.2 millimeters), has the potential to switch its "aperture" among wide angle, fish eye and zoom instantaneously. And because the device is so thin, just a few microns thick, it could be embedded anywhere. (For comparison, the average width of a human hair is about 100 microns.)

"There's no fundamental limit on how much you could increase the resolution,

"You could do gigapixels if you wanted.”

(A gig pixel image has 1 billion pixels, or 1,000 times more than an image from a 1-megapixel digital camera.)

The proof-of-concept device is a flat sheet with an array of 64 light receivers that can be thought of as tiny antennas tuned to receive light waves, each receiver in the array is individually controlled by a computer program.

Essentially, there's no limit on how much you could increase the resolution.