Omnivision Beats its Own Guinness World Record

BusinessWire: OmniVision announces the OH0TA OVMed medical image sensor—with a package size of just 0.55mm x 0.55mm, featuring a 1.0um pixel and a 1/31” optical format—smaller than the Guinness World Record held by its predecessor for the “Smallest Commercially Available Image Sensor.” The OH0TA also quadruples the RGB image resolution to 400x400, or 160 K Pixels, at 30 fps while reducing the power consumption by 20% to 20mW. This allows designers to add ultra-compact visualization to single-use and reusable endoscopes, as well as catheters and guidewires, with a small outer diameter of 1-2mm. Alternatively, this sensor’s uniquely small size gives medical device OEMs the flexibility to create a larger-diameter scope with a larger working channel.

“The trend toward minimally invasive procedures continues to grow, due to their greater success rates and shorter patient recovery times. However, for the narrowest areas of the anatomy, particularly in neuro and cardiac surgeries, previous sensors did not have the necessary combination of high resolution and extremely small size,” said Ehsan Ayar, medical product marketing manager at OmniVision. “The OH0TA is the world’s first sensor to offer this combination, enabling significant endoscope improvements, especially in comparison to traditional videoscopes made with optical fibers, which have limited resolution, poor imager quality and high cost.”

To achieve this increase in resolution, along with a smaller pixel size and optical format, the OH0TA is built on PureCel Plus-S stacked die technology. This pixel also provides sensitivity of 3600 mV/lux-sec, along with a SNR of 37.5dB. Additionally, PureCel Plus-S enables the OH0TA’s higher FWC, zero blooming and lower power consumption.

Other key features include a 15.5 degree CRA, enabling the use of lenses with high fields of view and short focus distances. It also supports a 4-wire interface, as well as raw analog data output, both of which can transmit via cables as long as 4 meters with minimal signal noise. For backward compatibility and easy adoption, this sensor interfaces with OmniVision’s existing OV426 ADC bridge chip. Additionally, it is autoclavable for reusable endoscope sterilization.

Samples of the OH0TA are available now, in OmniVision’s hCSP chip scale package with 100 micron thick cover glass and an anti-reflective coating.

BusinessWire: OmniVision also announces the OVMed OCHTA camera module based on the new sensor.