Computer: Enhance!

Photographers and computer-literate people have long laughed at the cop dramas and movies where the good guys have the "enhance" button for some grainy photo. For instance, they get a photo off some red-light camera where some pass sideview mirror has a 2.5 pixels covering a key license plate. "Can you enhance it," is the question. The answer is always yes.

That just might be possible. Scary. Some math geeks came up with an algorithm called "Compressed Sensing" and it is already being used in medical imaging to improve MRI scans.

I'm not going to further spoil the story, but you read it yourself at wired.com.