Homeland Security Tests 360-Degree Video Cam

The surveillance system, which uses multiple cameras to provide high-resolution images in real time, is being pilot tested at Logan International Airport.

The Department of Homeland Security has developed new surveillance-camera technology that provides a 360-degree, high-resolution view by stitching together multiple images.

The technology, developed by Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate, is called the Imaging System for Immersive Surveillance (ISIS) and works by creating images from multiple cameras and turning them into a single view, according to Homeland Security.

Photographers have been putting together multiple still images to provide a panoramic view of a scene for some time, but that’s typically assembled after images are taken. ISIS creates high-res images from multiple camera streams in real time.

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New Video Camera Sees It All

Traditional surveillance cameras can be of great assistance to law enforcement officers for a range of scenarios—canvassing a crowd for criminal activity during a Fourth of July celebration, searching for who left a suitcase bomb beneath a bench, or trying to pick out a terrorist who has fled the scene and blended into a teeming throng in the subway. But there are shortfalls. For starters, once they zoom in on a specific point of interest, they lose visual contact with the rest of the scene.

But a new video surveillance system currently being developed by the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) may soon give law enforcement an extra set of eyes. The Imaging System for Immersive Surveillance (or ISIS) takes new video camera and image-stitching technology and bolts it to a ceiling, mounts it on a roof, or fastens it to a truck-mounted telescoping mast.

Like a bug-eyed fisheye lens, ISIS sees v-e-r-y wide. But that’s where the similarity ends. Whereas a typical fisheye lens distorts the image and can only provide limited resolution, video from ISIS is perfectly detailed, edge-to-edge. That’s because the video is made from a series of individual cameras stitched into a single, live view—like a high-res video quilt.

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