Physicists have captured an image of a wasp's wing using less than one photon per pixel.

Peter Morris and his colleagues at the University of Glasgow, UK, used a technique called ghost imaging, which uses pairs of photons whose positions are inextricably correlated, or entangled. One of each photon pair was either transmitted or absorbed by the wing, while its twin was used to reconstruct the image.

Each photon was collected at a separate detector. To avoid recording stray photons that cause noise, a camera captured the 'image-creating' photon only when its partner from the wing was detected. Applying image-compression techniques, the authors further reduced the number needed to just 0.45 photons per pixel.

Such techniques could be useful in biological imaging when high levels of light could damage the sample, they say.

Nature Commun. 6, 5913 (2015)