SPAD cameras for event camera emulation

The split-screen video above derives two imaging modalities from a single SPAD sensor’s raw photon-detection data. On the right, an intensity image is formed by summing raw binary frames. On the left, an event camera emulation is generated using the method described in “Generalized Event Cameras,” CVPR 2024, which preserves scene intensity while retaining the low-bandwidth, high-speed characteristics of event-based vision. Both outputs are computed from the same underlying photon stream, differing only in post-capture processing. This yields a key advantage: because there is a single sensor and a single acquisition, the two modalities are inherently synchronized in time and space, without genlocking, cross-sensor calibration, or timestamp drift. The SPAD sensor thus functions as a flexible substrate that can be reprocessed into multiple imaging modalities entirely in software.