Femto Photography

Recently while using one of my favourite sites StumbleUpon I came across an article on Femto photography, this is a new kind of  technology that allows the user to see an image at a trillion frames per second, which sounds kind of cool but what use does it have and what does that really mean? Upon further research on femto photography I learned that this means that slow motion videos of light in motion or light propagation can be created, which according to the second article means the technology could be used to see around corners or look into the human body without exposing it to an x-ray. The articles didn't go into much detail on looking into the human body but focused more on looking around corners. Below is a video that explains how this idea works.

Essentially what the video tells us is that by firing a laser pulse at a corner and using the femto photography to record it an image of what lies around the corner can be reconstructed. The femto technology records the light protons that are  released when the laser hits the corner and using these protons in a similar way to radar a computer can generate a basic image of the hidden object.
Although at the moment this use of the technology is quite basic Ramesh Raskar, the brain behind femto photography, says that in the future this could be used in cars to avoid collisions around dangerous corners or by rescue workers at fires or earthquakes to locate survivors. The technology if worked on could also hold great importance in medical technology for health imaging.

The thing that has to be considered is that currently Femto photography is at its most basic level and  Ramesh Raskar ideas of its uses in the future can only be realised if additional researchers investigate and apply this technology in their own way, as usually happens with new technology some of its most interesting uses probably haven't even been thought of yet. I suppose this is the very reason I am interested by this technology, the fact that it is only in its beginnings and could become an important technology in the future or it due to lack of interest by investors or the scientific community it could simply disappear. 

Here is  Ramesh Raskar's TED talk on femto photography.