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The MRI machine will soon be able to do more than just imaging. It will be able to power and maneuver a tiny pill camera inside the digestive tract.

As a diagnostic tool, these cameras, known as capsule endoscopes, can provide wireless photos and videos of the digestive tract. Although the cameras exist today, there is no way to control them as they move through the body, and no way to let diagnosticians point the camera at specific areas or mark where the photos were taken.

That will soon change, because of technology developed by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Tel Aviv University, which was just published in the journal Biomedical Microdevices.

So far, the mechanism has been tested only in an aquarium inside an MRI machine, but researchers have no reason to believe it will function differently in the body.

Read the Diagnostic Imaging interview with principal investigator Noby Hata, PhD, an associate professor of radiology at Brigham and Woman’s Hospital, to learn more.

Recently, Sony announced that it has developed new technology for the tiny imaging chips that power cameras in portable devices, which will allow for clearer photographs while using less space and cutting manufacturing costs.

The company said it has developed a method for building CMOS sensors that will reduce their surface area and allow imaging circuitry to be produced separately from the supporting logic. Sony said it will also add new technology to reduce picture distortion in dark scenes and allow videos to capture a wider range of light.

"Initially we will work to insure that these sensors can be used in all smartphones," said Yasuhiro Ueda, an executive in Sony's image sensor division. "After we have achieved success with phones, we are planning to expand into areas such as audio-visual products, surveillance and manufacturing."

Sony's new manufacturing process layers image sensors on top of supporting logic using separate, stacked chips, as opposed to the current method of arraying both imaging and logic side by side on the same chip. This will create sensors with a smaller area while giving more space to processing logic, and allow for the two components to be produced independently.

Ueda said Sony could outsource the logic portion while focusing more on the image sensors, one of its strengths.

The company also said it would add white-light image sensors to the traditional red, green and blue found on such chips, providing better clarity to photos taken in low lighting. It will also increase the dynamic range of video recordings, allowing light sources of varying brightness to be captured in the same scene.

Source: PC Magazine

The Business Equipment Research and Test Laboratories (BERTL) has awarded Konica Minolta with the title of 2011 BERTL's Best Production Line of the Year for its bizhub PRESS C8000, bizhub PRESS C7000 and bizhub PRO B1200 devices. BERTL is an independent testing laboratory whose purpose is to provide objective, independent product evaluation reports and comparative analyses on imaging devices and software solutions.

Since 1995, the 'BERTL's Best' award has recognised the best device, software and product lines in the digital imaging marketplace launched over each year. The categories are based on desktop, workgroup, departmental and production work environments. BERTL's analysts review them to identify the select group of devices and software that stand apart from the others.

“In the Fall 2011 voting session, BERTL's expert analysts were tremendously impressed with how Konica Minolta's production print systems performed during testing,” says Art Wynne, President, BERTL. “The bizhub PRESS series continues to impress us, earning Konica Minolta the Best Production Line of the Year distinction.”

According to Leon Minnie, product manager: production systems at Konica Minolta South Africa, this is the fourth time in 2011 that Konica Minolta has received accolades from BERTL on behalf of its award-winning production print portfolio. “Earlier this year, BERTL also awarded multiple Spring 2011 BERTL's Best awards to Konica Minolta, including the 'Best Colour Production System' for the bizhub PRESS C8000; 'Best Colour Light Production System' for the bizhub PRESS C7000; and 'Best Monochrome Production System' for the bizhub PRO B1200.

“It is also remarkable that the bizhub PRESS range has impressed other institutions such as EDP (European Digital Print Association) and IDEAlliance. In fact, Konica Minolta's bizhub PRESS C8000 is the first digital press to receive the G7 Digital Press Certification from the IDEAlliance. G7 is IDEAlliance's industry-leading set of best practices for achieving grey balance, and is the driving force for achieving visual similarity across all print processes.”

“The BERTL's Best and others awards are a validation to Konica Minolta's ongoing innovation and market-leading technologies, and earning these most recent awards highlights how our customers can count on Konica Minolta to keep them at the forefront of digital press technology,” Minnie adds.

Source: WebBusiness

The field known as computational photography has exploded in the last decade, yielding powerful new cameras capable of tricks once seen only in the labs of make-believe.

For a long time camera makers and operators focused mostly on getting more pixels. But the “pixel war” is over, says Marc Levoy, a pioneer in computational photography at Stanford University. Today’s manufacturers are looking beyond good resolution.

Low-cost computing and new algorithms, combined with fancy optics and sensors, are drastically changing how cameras re-create the world. Recent developments include: a camera that could spot a culprit by peeking around corners, another that might divulge the identity of an attacker by collecting information reflected in a victim’s eyes, and a few that can turn anyone with a camera into a great photographer.

The addition of unconventional lenses means pictures can be refocused long after a shot is taken. And the “Frankencamera,” recently developed at Stanford, is designed to be programmable, so that users can play around with the hardware and the computer code behind it.
“The possibilities are not readily apparent at first,” write MIT’s Ramesh Raskar and Jack Tumblin of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., in a comprehensive textbook on computational photography set to be published this year. “Like a long-caged animal in a zoo destroyed by a hurricane, those of us who grew up with film photography are still standing here in shocked astonishment at the changes.”

With all the new souped-up cameras coming out and the many existing and upcoming smartphone apps that offer the ability to alter your photos, the creative possibilities are endless. You name it, programmers will find a way to do it.

Read more on Science News

Based on their recently updated U.S. Printing and Publishing Market Sizing: 2010-2015 study, InfoTrends expects that the U.S. printing, publishing, and packaging market will see an overall increase by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 0.6% from 2010 through 2015.

The U.S. Printing industry is expected to grow by a CAGR of 0.4% from 2010 to 2015. “The primary factor contributing to the stagnation of the printing industry is the impact of new, alternative media”, commented Steve Adoniou, Director at InfoTrends. “Any growth that will occur can be primarily attributed to value-added services, and to a lesser extent to digital printing and wide format digital printing.”

Other important trends impacting the printing industry are the migration of pages from offset printing to digital printing, operational consolidation, and production automation.

The publishing market is expected to see the most significant declines, due mostly to the continued decline and consolidation of the newspaper segment. The packaging market is expected to see moderate gains over the next five years.

Eastman Kodak Company recently announced the creation of a new and simpler business structure designed to increase productivity, reduce cost and accelerate its transformation into a digital company that delivers sustainable profitability and creates value for its stakeholders.

“As we complete Kodak’s transformation to a digital company, our future markets will be very different from our past, and we need to organize ourselves in keeping with that evolution,” said Antonio M. Perez, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “This new structure simplifies the organization, focuses it more precisely on our consumer and commercial customers, and puts the right people in place to capitalize fully on the tremendous technological capabilities of Kodak. These business structure changes also allow us to allocate resources more productively, continue to significantly reduce administrative costs, and improve efficiency. We are confident that these changes will support our efforts to make the most of our opportunities.”

The changes are effective January 1, 2012. Under the new structure, the Commercial and Consumer Segments will replace the current Graphic Communications Group (GCG), the Consumer Digital Imaging Group (CDG), and the Film, Photofinishing and Entertainment Group (FPEG), which represents the company’s traditional film and photographic paper products.

The Consumer Segment will include all of CDG plus Paper & Output Systems, Event Imaging Solutions, and the Consumer Film and Intellectual Property business.

The Commercial Segment will consist of three businesses: the Graphics, Entertainment & Commercial Film Business, which includes Prepress, Entertainment Imaging, Commercial Film and Global Consumables Manufacturing; Digital and Functional Printing; and Enterprise Services and Solutions, which includes document scanners, workflow software, and services.

Visit the Eastman Kodak Company website for further details

GE Healthcare's Brivo* NM615 (a single-head nuclear medicine gamma camera with SPECT capability) has received clearance from the U.S. FDA.
“We are proud to continue offering new nuclear medicine solutions allowing our customers to expand patient care across a wide range of capabilities and budgets”, said Nathan Hermony, Global GM of Nuclear Medicine, GE Healthcare. “Our investments in advanced technologies are designed to help clinicians make life saving decisions for their patients, more confidently.”

The more precise the information healthcare providers can get about a patient’s condition, the more effectively that patient can be treated. A step forward in detector design, the Elite NXT detector enables exceptional image quality. Elite NXT detectors are designed to offer outstanding SPECT resolution and exceptional contrast for superb image quality, all to help clinicians diagnose patients early and accurately. Ultra-thin design and auto-body contouring minimize the distance between the patient and the detectors for excellent resolution while SPECT-optimized collimators and the exceptionally high count rate enable extremely precise event detection.

For more information, visit the GE News Center

Congratulations to Kodak for earning three CES Innovations 2012 Design and Engineering Awards:

• the KODAK HERO 9.1 All-in-One Printer
• KODAK PLAYFULL Waterproof Video Camera
• KODAK PLAYSPORT Video Camera Zx5. 

To date, Kodak has received a total of 27 CES Innovations Awards.

At this year's show, Kodak is showcasing a host of connected products and solutions that make it easy to create, share and print brilliant images. Plus, for the first time ever at CES, they'll be showcasing one of their leading printing solutions for photo specialty printers, professional photo labs and commercial printers.

"Kodak has been synonymous with imaging for more than 120 years. And for today's social and mobile consumers, we continue to innovate to deliver intelligent and intuitive products that produce brilliant Kodak-quality images," said Vince Ferraro, Kodak's new global Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Consumer Digital Imaging Group. "People trust Kodak with their memories, and we want to help them do more with those memories. Whether at home, on the go, or at retail, Kodak has a smart and simple solution to capture, create, share and print."

Read more on Business Wire

Consumers are using their mobile phones to capture photos and videos more and more. In fact, a recent InfoTrends videography end-user survey, revealed mobile phones as the device used most often to capture video. Per InfoTrends, this is the first year mobile phones have taken the lead in video capture.

It is important to recognize the shift towards cellular devices. InfoTrends group director Ed Lee comments, “mobile phone vendors should strive to offer an enhanced videography experience, such as higher quality video capture, an improved user interface, and easier video sharing, for on-the-go consumers”.

Consumers generally carry their mobile phones with them almost everywhere they go, making these devices the most accessible for spontaneous video capture. By educating consumers on improved recording and sharing capabilities, vendors can improve the likelihood that consumers will utilize the video features on their camera phone or smartphone.

I3A's Camera Phone Image Quality (CPIQ) group understands these challenges — the team is currently working hard to complete a comprehensive set of specifications and tools that will improve camera phone image quality as well as a rating system that will provide meaningful information to consumers. While current CPIQ work has concentrated on "still" images, the group also plans to incorporate video into the mix in the near future.

To learn more about I3A's CPIQ Group and find out how you can contribute to this important work, contact Noel Mareno [Phone: +1 (214) 244-1927 | Email: noelm@i3a.org]

Mobile technology will be driving many of the trends on display at CES 2012 in Las Vegas next week. Phones, tablets, and mobile software are soaking up most of the energy and attention in technology today.

Expect this year's CES to include lots of phones that allow users to upload images to Facebook, email them to friends, or put them on a photo-sharing service–instantly and wirelessly. Perhaps we'll see the first LTE Windows Phone for AT&T, or maybe a Sony Ericsson phone equipped with a 13-megapixel camera.

This year also promises to be heavy on Wi-Fi-enabled imaging devices. Cameras are feeling the heat from smartphones, and more and more of them this year will come equipped with phonelike uploading and sharing features so that they can compete more squarely with phones. Samsung has already announced a new DualView point-and-shoot camera with Wi-Fi connectivity, and several companies traditionally use CES to show off their new connected cameras.

Big optical zoom ranges in very small cameras are another big trend, as the pocket megazoom category has grown in popularity over the years. Cameras with zoom ranges of up to 12X have become more pocketable than ever; at less than an inch thick, they're smaller than some 3X-optical-zoom cameras from just a few years back.

There is also sure to be a deluge of apps — keep your eyes open for augmented-reality apps promising new "Kinect-like" features such as gesture recognition.

For more on what to expect from CES, check out the complete article from PC Advisor.

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