Harvest Imaging 2025 Forum - Dec 8, 9 - Single-Photon Detection

Registration page: https://harvestimaging.com/forum_introduction_2025_coming.php

The Harvest Imaging forum will continue with a next edition scheduled for December 8 & 9, 2025, in Delft, the Netherlands. The basic intention of the Harvest Imaging forum is to have a scientific and technical in-depth discussion on one particular topic that is of great importance and value to the digital imaging community.

The 2025 Harvest Imaging forum will deal with a single topic and will have only one world-level expert as the speaker: 

"SINGLE PHOTON DETECTION"
Prof. dr. Robert HENDERSON (Univ. of Edinburgh, UK)

Abstract:

Access to the ultrafast quantum statistics of light enabled by new solid-state single photon imaging technologies is revolutionizing camera technology. 

The noise-free detection and precise localization of individual photons enables imaging of time itself (which directly enables depth perception) at unprecedented temporal and spatial resolutions. Such solid-state single photon imaging technologies now approach the sensitivity, timing resolution and dark noise of vacuum electrocathode approaches whilst providing robustness, low cost and high spatial resolution. Amongst these, CMOS single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) arrays offer the unique capability to extract single photon statistics in high background conditions using massively parallel on-chip timing and digital computation.

This forum will highlight the modelling, device structures, characterisation methods and circuitry necessary to develop this new generation of SPAD imaging system. Recent advances in SPAD direct time of flight (dToF) and photon counting sensor design techniques optimized for low power, computation, and area will be reviewed. 

The forum will focus primarily on the mainstream commercial applications of SPADs in low light imaging, depth imaging (RGB-Z) and LIDAR. Further examples will be drawn from emerging use cases in fluorescence microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, non-line-of-sight imaging, quantum optics and medical diagnostics (X-ray, PET). Future trends and prospects enabled by 3D-stacking technology will be considered.

Bio: 

Robert K. Henderson is a Professor of Electronic Imaging in the School of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. He obtained his PhD in 1990 from the University of Glasgow. From 1991, he was a research engineer at the Swiss Centre for Microelectronics, Neuchatel, Switzerland. In 1996, he was appointed senior VLSI engineer at VLSI Vision Ltd, Edinburgh, UK where he worked on the world’s first single chip video camera.

From 2000, as principal VLSI engineer in STMicroelectronics Imaging Division he developed image sensors for mobile phone applications. He joined University of Edinburgh in 2005, designing the first SPAD image sensors in nanometer CMOS technologies in the MegaFrame and SPADnet EU projects. This research activity led to the first volume SPAD time-of-flight products in 2013 in the form of STMicroelectronics FlightSense series, which perform an autofocus-assist now present in over 2 billion smartphones. He benefits from a long-term research partnership with STMicroelectronics in which he explores medical, scientific and high speed imaging applications of SPAD technology. In 2014, he was awarded a prestigious ERC advanced fellowship. He is an advisor to Ouster Automotive and a Fellow of the IEEE and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.