The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 31, 2026
Filed:
Oct. 11, 2022
Purdue Research Foundation, West Lafayette, IN (US);
Stanley H. Chan, West Lafayette, IN (US);
Chengxi Li, West Lafayette, IN (US);
Abhiram Gnanasambandam, West Lafayette, IN (US);
Xiangyu Qu, West Lafayette, IN (US);
PURDUE RESEARCH FOUNDATION, West Lafayette, IN (US);
Abstract
Systems and methods for detecting objects in photon-limited environments is disclosed for use in, for example, security, defense, life science, autonomous vehicles, and various consumer and medical applications. At least one embodiment integrates a non-local feature aggregation method and a knowledge distillation method with state-of-the-art detector networks. The two methods offer better feature representations for photon limited images. In comparison with baseline systems, detectors according to embodiments of the present disclosure demonstrate superior performance in synthetic and real environments. When embodiments are applied to the latest photon counting devices, object detection can be achieved at a photon level of 1 photon per pixel or lower, significantly surpassing the capabilities of existing CMOS image sensors and algorithms.