Note: High-speed optical imaging powered by acoustic emission triggering.

Aiming at high speed video recording of rapid events, which occur in loaded solids with unpredictable timing, the efficient triggering method is proposed for optical imaging systems with an aid from the highly sensitive acoustic emission technique. The efficiency of the proposed method is demonstrated on two examples: observation of initiation and propagation of highly localized shear bands in metallic glasses and mechanical twinning in Mg polycrystals.