Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a camera that can capture 3D images in almost total darkness by means of existing hardware.

The system uses Lidar. This systematically shoots a laser at objects in a grid pattern and monitors the time taken to reflect light back to a sensor to slowly build a 3D model of its background.

Usually, these systems fires a laser beam many times and require the detection of hundreds or thousands of photons for a pixel in the final image. However, the MIT researchers used single, tremendously short bursts of laser light and required only a single photon for each pixel.

With the purpose of making a 3D model, the scientists made more logic of limited data by making computations on neighboring pixels. This helped them in selecting accurate data more accurately from very high relative levels of noise.

The technique would frequently be implemented in software, thereby allowing it to be applied with existing photon detectors. All the reflected photons are having the same wavelength, because of the laser used. This helps in creating monochrome images.

Co-author of the research, Ahmed Kirmani, reveals "With only one photon per pixel you would expect the image to be completely featureless".