The HYDRACON image system

This paper describes an image-mosaic and an electronic scanning structure with active mosaic elements that serves to convert images with various sources of illumination energy into real-time television pictures. The basic operation is explained, and, a first-order analysis of the key devices and of the system is made. Application to sonic images in water is examined in some detail. The HYDRACON system takes advantage of modern electronic techniques, including fiber electronics, micro-electronics and circuitry, and advanced techniques for assembling precise and complicated mosaic structures. The mosaic used is in array of separate channels. Each channel has an energy transducer, amplification, demodulation, selective gating, variable storage or integration capability, and variable electronic cross-correlation. In short, the system has a generalized facility for image-processing. The transduced one-to-one mapping becomes a potential-field image, which is scanned by an electron beam in television-camera fashion to produce a conventional video signal. In addition to the discussion of the current state-of-the-art, some projection of the technique is made into the future.