Plate Nº 18 · recorded November 13, 2026
PhysicsReported finding
Camera System Sets 3D Imaging Record at 150,000 Frames Per Second
INRS researchers set a world record in profilometry, capturing 3D images at 150,000 frames per second with low-cost LEDs — fast enough to recover speech from ultrasonic vibrations.
By Nathan Brooks3 min read690 words
In brief
- C-BLIP captures 3D images at up to 150,000 frames per second, a world record in profilometry
- The study, led by professor Jinyang Liang at INRS, was published in Nature Communications in 2026
- The system used eye-safe LED illumination and low-cost optics rather than specialized equipment
- The team recovered a spoken message from ultrasonic vibrations on an object's surface
- First author Cheng Jiang says GPU-accelerated processing could eventually enable real-time visualization
A new imaging technology has captured three-dimensional images at 150,000 frames per second, a world record in profilometry — the science of measuring an object's surface shape and height. Professor Jinyang Liang's team at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) in Canada published the work in Nature Communications in 2026.
For perspective, a standard smartphone camera shoots slow-motion video at around 240 frames per second. C-BLIP runs more than 600 times faster, and it does it in 3D.
The technology is called C-BLIP, short for chromatically band-limited illumination profilometry. It lets researchers visualize events that happen in a flash and can't easily be replayed: collisions, aerodynamic motion and ultrasonic vibrations, all rendered as three-dimensional measurements rather than flat video.
What did the team actually record?
The researchers, based at the INRS Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications Research Centre, put the system through a series of demonstrations. They captured and measured:
- A projectile striking a turbofan blade — the kind of impact test central to aviation safety
- The aerodynamics of a falling maple samara, the winged seed that spins as it drops
- The vibrations of a loudspeaker membrane in motion
The team also detected ultrasonic vibrations — sound waves above the range of human hearing — on an object's surface, and then extracted acoustic information from those tiny surface movements. That last capability produced the study's most striking result: recovering a spoken message purely from vibration data.
"With C-BLIP, we can continuously capture fast, nonrepeatable three-dimensional phenomena that were previously difficult to observe and quantify. Beyond the speed record, this breakthrough opens new opportunities to better understand dynamic phenomena across a wide range of scientific and technological fields," said Liang, who is a professor at INRS and holds the Canada Research Chair in Ultrafast Computational Imaging.
Why does accessibility matter here?
Ultrafast 3D imaging has historically carried three big limitations, according to the researchers: slow acquisition speeds, heavy computational demands for reconstructing images, and the high cost of specialized equipment. Most labs simply can't afford it.
C-BLIP attacks all three constraints at once. The system combines a cost-effective optical design, eye-safe LED illumination and a lightweight reconstruction method — meaning the math needed to turn raw data into 3D images is simpler than in earlier systems. LEDs, rather than lasers or other exotic light sources, keep the hardware cheap and safe to work around.
"What excites us most is the ability to observe phenomena that were previously invisible. C-BLIP even allowed us to visualize ultrasonic vibrations and recover a spoken message from them, demonstrating the potential of this approach for a wide range of scientific and technological applications," said Cheng Jiang, a postdoctoral researcher in energy and materials sciences at INRS and first author of the study.
Where could it be used?
The team sees applications across mechanics, aerodynamics, microfluidics — the study of fluid behavior in tiny channels — high-rate material testing and additive manufacturing, better known as 3D printing. Each of these fields involves fast, often one-time events where you get a single chance to record what happens.
Material testing is a good example. When a projectile hits a blade or a sample fails under stress, the interesting deformation happens in milliseconds and can't be repeated identically. A system that captures the full 3D surface evolution in one shot gives engineers data they previously had to infer.
What's next?
The work isn't finished. The INRS team is now integrating GPU-accelerated processing — graphics-card computing of the kind used in gaming and AI — into the system. The goal is eventual real-time visualization, where researchers could watch ultrafast 3D phenomena as they happen rather than reconstructing them afterward.
As with any single study, the practical rollout will depend on how the technology performs beyond the lab. But the combination of record speed, 3D measurement and low-cost hardware marks a genuine shift in what ordinary research environments can observe.
Publication details: Cheng Jiang et al., "Ultrahigh-speed chromatically band-limited illumination profilometry," Nature Communications (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-78478-w
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