It is a nanotechnology innovation that could also lead to the entire surface of our computers or cell phones eventually becoming a camera, with no need to create separate cameras.

In fact, technology has evolved and cameras get smaller and smaller, so small that there is now one the size of a grain of salt - and one that takes pictures with a higher quality than other ultra-compact cameras.

Known as meta-surface, the technology that is covered by 1.6 million cylindrical poles, the camera can capture color photos with as much quality as conventional lenses, some with a size 500,000 times larger than this new invention, writes the Science Alert.

The invention is useful in the field of photography as it can also help develop miniature robots that give experts a clearer idea of what goes on inside the human body.

"It has been a challenge to create and configure these tiny microstructures to do what we want them to do. For this specific task of capturing large-field RGB images, it was previously unclear how to co-design millions of nanostructures together with post-process algorithms," says commputation scientist Ethan Tseng of Princeton University.

To do this, one of the camera's special tricks is the way it combines hardware with computational processes to improve the image taken. "The algorithms that process the signals use machine learning techniques to reduce blur and other distortions that happen with cameras of this size," says the scientist.

However, these algorithms can also be used to detect particular objects that the camera looks for, such as signs of disease in the human body. Processing is added to the metasurface construction that replaces the usual curved glass or plastic lenses with a material that is half a millimeter wide.