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SJC_Hacker 4 days ago

They are used in OCT (optical coherence tomography) as well

OCT is a technique which uses IR to get "through" tissue using beam in the near infrared (roughly 950 nm, with a spread of roughly 100 nm). The return is passed through interferometer and what amounts to a diffraction grating to produce the "spread" that the line camera sees. After some signal processing (FFT is a big one), you can get the intensity at depth. If you sweep in X,Y somehow, usually deflecting the beam with a mirror, you can obtain a volumetric image like an MRI or sonogram. Very useful for imaging the eye, particularly the back of the retina where the blood vessels are.

s0rce 4 days ago | parent [-]

Yah, lots of neat line scan camera applications in spectroscopy. Basically any grating application. 950nm would be on the edge of where you'd implement a Si CCD for OCT as the sensitivity drops as the Si is no longer absorbing. InGaAs detectors are used further in the NIR.