Scientists have created a digital camera capable of capturing mega-pixel images that could be used for imaging wavelengths outside the visible spectrum.

The digital camera created by Kevin Kelly and colleagues at Rice University, Houston, uses a single-pixel silicon chip sensor and thousands of tiny mirrors, reported science portal Science A GoGo.

The silicon chip, known as a digital micro-mirror device (DMD), is used primarily in digital projectors where digital information is converted into light.

The scientists turned this functionality around so that the mirrors could be used to capture light instead.

Unlike a normal one-mega-pixel camera that captures one million points of light for every frame, the new camera creates an image by capturing just one point of light or pixel several thousand times in rapid succession.

"For some wavelengths outside the visible spectrum, it's often too expensive to produce large arrays of detectors, which the new camera is capable of doing," said one of the researchers.