Advanced Imaging

Integrating optics with sensors and cameras poses some challenges when the going gets big.

This spring Advanced Imaging convened a panel of industry experts from five major companies for a roundtable discussion of large-format imaging. Press the Play Button to listen to the complete discussion or download the MP3 to listen later at your convenience.

A current technological challenge concerns large-format imaging, with the mating of larger area or linescan sensors to many conventional lenses and mounting options (within certain restrictive environments). This can result in a loss of image quality around the edges, which impacts a variety of applications.

From a dimensional standpoint, sensors larger than one inch can become an issue. From a pixel standpoint, problems begin to arise at 1k on very fast systems (lower f-numbers). However, in moderate-speed systems problems may not be noticeable until a 2-4k sensor is used. Operational factors include the chief ray angle, back focal distance and working distance.

Advanced Imaging organized an exploratory roundtable discussion in May to look into the issues associated with large-format imaging. This discussion builds on an initiative started in 2005 by Edmund Optics (Barrington, N.J.) at the 2005 Robots and Vision Show, and an editorial discussion with Schneider Optics Inc. (Hauppauge, N.Y.) where these concerns were emphasized.

Roundtable participants were picked to provide a reasonable representation of the technologies in question — optics, sensors and cameras. The goal was to have two companies represented from each area. However, one optics company had to withdraw at the last minute and could not be replaced in time. The participants were:

Optics

• Sam Sadoulet, director of engineering for Edmund Optics.

Sensors

• Terry Guy, product marketing, image sensor solution, Eastman Kodak Company (Rochester, N.Y.).
• Gloria Putnam, Applications Engineer, Eastman Kodak Company (Rochester, N.Y.).
• Sandor Barna, director of strategy and planning for Micron Technology, Inc. (San Jose, Calif.).

Cameras

• Gunnar Jonson, product market director, JAI PULNiX (Copenhagen, Denmark).
• Ilias Levis, product manager, Sony Visual Imaging Products (Park Ridge, N.J.).

This entry was posted on Monday, June 19th, 2006 at 12:44 pm and is filed under Roundtable Discussions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.