High Speed Imaging is the science of taking pictures of very fast phenomena. The Imaging laboratory houses the Oxford Laser VisiLase V227 system which includes the Phantom V5.0, one of the highest data-rate digital cameras in the world. It is capable of taking high-speed video at up to 60,000 frames per second. When replayed at normal video rates, this corresponds to 2,400 times slow motion. In addition the camera can operate at a resolution of 1024 x 1024, which is four times the image quality of a TV image. The VisiLase V227 includes a laser illumination source that acts like an ultra-fast strobe light to give effective exposure times of 1/20,000,000 of a second for every image. This is short enough to freeze the motion of a bullet in flight, making the system the most powerful digital imaging tool ever. Post processing of the image sequences with particle velicometry software can then reveal information about flow velocity, particle size distribution or spray parameters.

Application examples include visualisation of spray break up, measurement of droplet sizes, measurement of spray pattern and cone angle, visualisation of liquid and gas flows, measurement of flow velocity and derivatives such as vorticity, shear and strain and measurement of particle sizes (solids or liquids) in gas or liquid flows. The cluster labs have also used the camera to image a glaucoma test on a human eyeball, at a rate of 3,800 frames per second.