WESTWOOD—UCLA researchers at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed the world’s fastest bar code scanner. According to the September 29, edition journal of Applied Physics Letters, this new device can read bar codes at 25 million frames per second.

Currently, bar codes are used nationwide from retail inventory to blood banks that store life-saving information. According to Matthew Chin, from the UCLA newsroom, “Barcodes are read by optically scanning the code's alternating light and dark bars and then using a computer program to convert the resulting image into digital form, essentially ‘decoding’ the information stored within the code.”

While traditional bar code readers require a range of pixels to capture an image, the new device requires only a single pixel camera to convert the image to functional data. Therefore, the new imaging technique cuts the amount of data that must be processed, making the procedure much quicker.

Credit goes to UCLA researcher Keisuke Goda, along with graduate researcher Kevin K. Tsia, and Professor Bahram Jalali. Thanks to their hard work, the new device uses a phenomenon known as “amplified dispersive Fourier transform” to read bar codes at a frame rate of 25 MHz, which stands at 1,000 times faster than the current technology.

Jalali, who teaches electrical engineering, stated that “the result of the fastest bar code reader was a natural progression of about 15 years of work.”

Companies and individuals nationwide are already seeking its benefits due to its better accuracy and increasingly faster rates. The speed of the bar code scanner will be especially useful in dealing with large volumes of equipment, particularly that of blood samples.

Since millions of people donate blood, the bar codes will help with identifying blood samples by the donor and the date it was donated.

"This is more than a fast scanner," Goda said. "It can detect ultra fast transient phenomena in real time that have not been observed by conventional techniques in the past. Therefore, it is not only useful for industrial applications, but also has much application to basic science."

Goda said “the commercialization of this bar code scanner will not only add to another accomplishment to UCLA, but could be profitable as well.”