High Speed Imaging

Enhance the performance of your existing camera with short-pulse laser illumination to freeze the motion of fast-moving subjects.

High speed imaging systems from Oxford Lasers combine high-speed cameras with pulsed lasers to offer the most powerful imaging systems in the world of R & D. The short-pulse lasers enhance camera performance by illuminating subjects with ultra-short pulses of light. Motion blur is eliminated, even for subjects moving at high speed. Laser light can be formed into a sheet (known as a lightsheet) to take a 2D slice through a turbulent 3D flow for flow visualization, spray pattern measurement, or fluid flow velocity measurement.

Capture a moment in time

Why use a pulsed laser for high speed photography?

Conventional Spray Illumination

Laser Spray Illumination

Both image sequences were taken using the same spray subject and the same high speed camera.

For the left movie a conventional, continuous light source was used. Even though the exposure time was only 1/4,500 second, there is motion blurring in the movie (you can’t see the individual droplets).

The right movie was taken using laser strobe illumination from an Oxford Lasers copper vapor laser (CVL). The short pulse from the laser reduces the effective exposure time to 1/40,000,000 of a second (25 ns), and even the smallest droplets in the spray can be seen clearly – frozen in flight. The same technique can even freeze bullets in flight.

Applications of High Speed Imaging

Thousands of researchers around the world have used Oxford Lasers high speed imaging systems to gain insight into their studies. Our imaging systems have been used in applications including:

• Automotive Development – imaging fuel injection , engine airflows and airbag deployment
• Slow motion photography of the natural world from understanding river erosion to unravelling the mysteries of the flight of fruit flies
• Studies of sprays and aerosols from metered dose inhalers to hairsprays.
• Ballistics – freeze the motion of projectiles in flight
• High speed Schlieren photography
• Extensions to PIV, particle sizing, and viewing through flames, arcs and explosions.
• Shock wave propagation and interaction studies

Lightsheets

Laser light can be formed into a thin sheet of light that can be used to take a 2D slice through a 3D flow. The example on the right shows the turbulent spray cloud from a pulmonary drug delivery device as it slows in a spacer device.

Oxford Lasers has developed a unique fiber-optic delivered lightsheet – the FiberSheet, which can be used with copper vapor lasers and diode-pumped solid state lasers (subject to suitable fiber-delivery). The FiberSheet gives six times higher beam quality fibre-delivered lightsheets than can be achieved in any other way.

The Firefly laser produces a thin, focusable light sheet straight out of the box. It’s easy to set-up and use, and is an extremely capable high-speed imaging tool.