Metamaterials perform image compression before light reaches the sensor

Add image compression to the list of nifty applications for metamaterials. Metamaterials guide light waves to create “invisibility cloaks” and bend sound waves to make theoretical noise reduction systems for urban areas. But these materials are tuned to particular wavelengths; some invisibility cloaks don’t work at all visible wavelengths because they leak those wavelengths of light. Now researchers have capitalized on that leakiness to build a new functional device: a microwave imaging system that compresses an image as it's being collected—not afterward as our digital cameras do.