Hyperspectral imaging acquires data in both the spatial and frequency domains
to offer abundant physical or biological information. However, conventional
hyperspectral imaging has intrinsic limitations of bulky instruments, slow data
acquisition rate, and spatiospectral tradeoff. Here we introduce hyperspectral
learning for snapshot hyperspectral imaging in which sampled hyperspectral data
in a small subarea are incorporated into a learning algorithm to recover the
hypercube. Hyperspectral learning exploits the idea that a photograph is more
than merely a picture and contains detailed spectral information. A small
sampling of hyperspectral data enables spectrally informed learning to recover
a hypercube from an RGB image. Hyperspectral learning is capable of recovering
full spectroscopic resolution in the hypercube, comparable to high spectral
resolutions of scientific spectrometers. Hyperspectral learning also enables
ultrafast dynamic imaging, leveraging ultraslow video recording in an
off-the-shelf smartphone, given that a video comprises a time series of
multiple RGB images. To demonstrate its versatility, an experimental model of
vascular development is used to extract hemodynamic parameters via statistical
and deep-learning approaches. Subsequently, the hemodynamics of peripheral
microcirculation is assessed at an ultrafast temporal resolution up to a
millisecond, using a conventional smartphone camera. This spectrally informed
learning method is analogous to compressed sensing; however, it further allows
for reliable hypercube recovery and key feature extractions with a transparent
learning algorithm. This learning-powered snapshot hyperspectral imaging method
yields high spectral and temporal resolutions and eliminates the spatiospectral
tradeoff, offering simple hardware requirements and potential applications of
various machine-learning techniques.Comment: This paper will appear in PNAS Nexu