Sunday, February 13, 2011

ISDI-cmos Offers Two Image Sensors in One Array

ISDI-cmos is the UK-based company grown out of the UK Research Council funded projects on Active Pixel Sensors: "Multidimensional Integrated Intelligent Imaging" and its continuation. The company aims to supply specialised devices and systems for high-value markets particularly in the scientific, medical and security spheres.

One of the company's products is DUOS - a range of CMOS imagers which act as two independent cameras in a single array. Any rectangular region within the array can be selected dynamically and read out separately from the rest of the array, which can operate at totally different frame rates. DUOS’s flexibility allows:
  • Accurate recording of selected highlighted region at high speed to prevent saturation and significantly extend the dynamic range.
  • Track a selected object at high speed and of specified size.
  • Explore the potential of optimum imaging where small regions of the image are acquired to a specified quality criterion (e.g., signal-to-noise) by only acquiring sufficient frames to meet the local criterion.
The first available member of the DUOS family has a following specification:
  • Overall array is 1,024 x 1,024 with 20 um square pixels
  • Frame rate 40 fps maximum for full 1K x 1K array(slow mode); for region 64 x 64, in fast mode, up to 10,000 fps. If used as a single array camera, then frame rate up to 80 fps.
  • Fully programmable slow/fast regions with resolution down to 4 x 1 pixel blocks.

The distinctive advantage of DUOS over other detectors is that the local reset can be performed only for the region of interest making it possible to have two independent cameras on the same pixel array.

ISDI-cmos is developing a new family of 7.5 um pixel pitch imagers based on the DUOS concept but with support for multiple regions of interest – including arbitrary shapes.


Thanks to NA for sending me the info!

11 comments:

  1. This can be handled with logarithmic law sensor in one frame.

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  2. from which institution does this company come??

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  3. i dont think log sensor will do the job for scientific applications or maintaining good S/N on the dark area of the image.

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  4. @ from which institution does this company come??

    From University of Sheffield, UK, I'd guess:

    http://www.shef.ac.uk/eee/research/iel

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  5. The classic log sensor has poor performance. Our new log sensor can have the same SNR as normal linear CMOS sensor but with more than 120dB DR without any accommodation. It'll be presented at ISE2011.
    -yang ni

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  6. here is a demo :
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtmXFqptA9A

    -yang ni

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  7. Here is a demo video:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtmXFqptA9A

    -yang ni

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  8. DUOS camera offer independent readouts for selected regions. This enables two camera operations within the same pixel array; each of those cameras has its own programmable gain and at the same time is possible to perform multiple sampling within what we call the ‘fast’ camera while we are reading out the background image with what we call the ‘slow’ camera. I don’t think a log sensor can match this operation since this sensor was design for specific application with bright region in the centre of the image. In some scientific applications is important to have integrating detectors because some of the particles arrive are not a uniform with time. Log sensors assume a constant illumination to operate.

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  9. A log sensor can be sampled at virtually any moment, so such operation can be done more easily by using random addressing based architecture.

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  10. Company grown out of the UK Research Council funded projects on Active Pixel Sensors' Hmmm. This is interesting knowing that we (Rutherford Appleton Lab) designed all the sensors for this project ...

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    1. This sensor was not designed by RAL

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