EMVA 1288 Standartize Sensor Performance Characterization

Vision Systems Design: European Machine Vision Association (EMVA) has endorsed EMVA 1288, a standard that's supposed to become definitive when specifying sensors and cameras. In its approach, the EMVA standard uses a number of modules to specify the parameters of a sensor or camera. Module 1 specifies the sensitivity, quantum efficiency, dynamic range and noise, Module 2 highlights the linearity, artifacts and defect pixels of the image sensor, Module 3 talks about color.

"The standard defines exactly the measurement setup, the measurement acquisition procedure, the parameter computation, and the data presentation. This makes it possible to reproduce the results on different sites such as the manufacturer and the customer. Further, the user knows that all presented data is acquired at the same operating condition-contrary to specifying, for example, sensitivity at maximum integration time, and the dark signal nonuniformity (DSNU) at minimum integration time. The chosen set of mandatory parameters and the presentation of the raw measurement data further permits the customer to compute additional quantities necessary for his application, rather than having to physically test a set of cameras to find out which ones can reach the performance."

The official draft of the EMVA 1288 standard can be accessed at www.emva.org.