A tiny VIS-NIR snapshot multispectral camera

Bert Geelen; Carolina Blanch; Pilar Gonzalez; Nicolaas Tack; Andy Lambrechts

doi:10.1117/12.2077583

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13 March 2015 A tiny VIS-NIR snapshot multispectral camera

Bert Geelen, Carolina Blanch, Pilar Gonzalez, Nicolaas Tack, Andy Lambrechts

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Proceedings Volume 9374, Advanced Fabrication Technologies for Micro/Nano Optics and Photonics VIII; 937414 (2015) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2077583
Event: SPIE OPTO, 2015, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

Spectral imaging can reveal a lot of hidden details about the world around us, but is currently confined to laboratory environments due to the need for complex, costly and bulky cameras. Imec has developed a unique spectral sensor concept in which the spectral unit is monolithically integrated on top of a standard CMOS image sensor at wafer level, hence enabling the design of compact, low cost and high acquisition speed spectral cameras with a high design flexibility. This flexibility has previously been demonstrated by imec in the form of three spectral camera architectures: firstly a high spatial and spectral resolution scanning camera, secondly a multichannel snapshot multispectral camera and thirdly a per-pixel mosaic snapshot spectral camera. These snapshot spectral cameras sense an entire multispectral data cube at one discrete point in time, extending the domain of spectral imaging towards dynamic, video-rate applications. This paper describes the integration of our per-pixel mosaic snapshot spectral sensors inside a tiny, portable and extremely user-friendly camera. Our prototype demonstrator cameras can acquire multispectral image cubes, either of 272x512 pixels over 16 bands in the VIS (470-620nm) or of 217x409 pixels over 25 bands in the VNIR (600-900nm) at 170 cubes per second for normal machine vision illumination levels. The cameras themselves are extremely compact based on Ximea xiQ cameras, measuring only 26x26x30mm, and can be operated from a laptop-based USB3 connection, making them easily deployable in very diverse environments.

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Bert Geelen, Carolina Blanch, Pilar Gonzalez, Nicolaas Tack, and Andy Lambrechts "A tiny VIS-NIR snapshot multispectral camera", Proc. SPIE 9374, Advanced Fabrication Technologies for Micro/Nano Optics and Photonics VIII, 937414 (13 March 2015); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2077583

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