SiOnyx backgrounder says: "SiOnyx XQE CMOS image sensors provide superior night vision, biometrics, eye tracking, and a natural human interface through our proprietary Black Silicon semiconductor technology. XQE image sensors deliver unprecedented performance advantages in infrared imaging, including sensitivity enhancements as high as 10x today’s sensor solutions.
XQE enhanced IR sensitivity takes advantage of the naturally occurring IR ‘nightglow’ to enable imaging under extreme (0.001 lux) conditions. XQE sensors provide high-quality daytime color as well as nighttime imaging capabilities that offer new levels of performance and threat detection.
As a result, SiOnyx’s Black Silicon platform represents a significant breakthrough in the development of smaller, lower cost, higher performance photonic devices.
The SiOnyx XQE technology is based on a proprietary laser process that creates the ultimate light trapping pixel, which is capable of increased quantum efficiency across the silicon band gap without damaging artifacts like dark current, non-uniformities, image lag or bandwidth limitations.
Compared to today’s CCD and CMOS image sensors, SiOnyx XQE CMOS sensors provide increased IR responsivity at the critical 850nm and 940nm wavelengths that are used in IR illumination. SiOnyx has more than 1,000 claims to the technology used in Black Silicon.
Surface modification of silicon enables SiOnyx to achieve the theoretical limit in light trapping, which results in extremely high absorption of both visible and infrared light.
The result is the industry’s best uncooled low light CMOS sensor that can be used in bright light (unlike standard night vision goggles) and can see and display color and display in high resolution (unlike thermal sensors)."
If I understand well, this action cam is a color camera. How can they exploit the extended NIR response ?
ReplyDeleteI'd guess they are using NIR data to improve luminance information. The RGB pixels on the sensor the adds chrominance which is heavily fintered to remove noise. SiOnyx says:
Delete"XQE enhanced IR sensitivity takes advantage of the naturally occurring IR ‘nightglow’ to enable imaging under extreme (0.001 lux) conditions. XQE sensors provide high-quality daytime color as well as nighttime imaging capabilities that offer new levels of performance and threat detection."
Using NIR to augment the visible band falls over when imaging materials with anomalous IR reflectance. Foliage appears brighter in NIR, and some fabrics too.
DeleteMaybe they could use the NIR for a point function used for denoise, instead of using it as luma information.
France Television has used such CMOS camera without IR-cut filter in a documentary movie, but the night scene needs very special color processing ...
DeleteYes black fabrics almost universally reflect IR light and the iris of the human eye absorbs more than usual leading to some creepy looking people. Perhaps they have a RBGI filter array?
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