360 Degree Video Surveillance Camera

Traditional surveillance cameras can be of great assistance to law enforcement officers for a range of scenarios -- canvassing a crowd for criminal activity, searching for who left a suitcase beneath a bench, or trying to pick out a suspect who has fled a crime scene and blended into a teeming throng in the subway.

But there are shortfalls. For starters, once they zoom in on a specific point of interest, they lose visual contact with the rest of the scene.

Now, a new video surveillance system currently being developed by the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) may soon give law enforcement an extra set of eyes. The Imaging System for Immersive Surveillance (or ISIS) takes new video camera and image-stitching technology and bolts it to a ceiling, mounts it on a roof, or fastens it to a truck-mounted telescoping mast.

Like a bug-eyed fisheye lens, ISIS sees v-e-r-y wide. But that's where the similarity ends. Whereas a typical fisheye lens distorts the image and can only provide limited resolution, video from ISIS is perfectly detailed, edge-to-edge. That's because the video is made from a series of individual cameras stitched into a single, live view -- like a high-res video quilt.

"Coverage this sweeping, with detail this fine, requires a very high pixel count," says program manager Dr. John Fortune, of S&T's Infrastructure and Geophysical Division, "ISIS has a resolution capability of 100 megapixels." That's as detailed as 50 full-HDTV movies playing at once, with optical detail to spare. You can zoom in close…and closer…without losing clarity.

The stitching together of several images isn't exactly cutting-edge magic. For years, creative photographers have used low-cost stitching software to create breathtaking high-res images (like that famous image of the National Mall from Inauguration Day 2009). But those are still images, created days or weeks after a scene was shot. ISIS is quilting video -- in real time. And, a unique interface allows maintenance of the full field of view, while a focal point of choice can be magnified.