Cross-differential dynamic microscopy

We demonstrate the use of a dual-camera-equipped microscope for the study of the wavevector-dependent dynamics of soft matter. Contrary to the standard differential dynamic microscopy (DDM) in which a series of digital video images is acquired with a single camera at a constant frame rate, we use two randomly triggered cameras to acquire two sequences of images of the same region in the sample. From the two data sets we calculate cross-image differences and Fourier analyze them as a function of time delay between the two images. We show that this technique can greatly decrease the time delay, which allows us to measure fast dynamics at larger wavevectors that could not have been performed with a single camera setup.