The Participants:

• Colin Earle is Marketing Manager of Roper Scientific, Physical Sciences Division(Trenton, NJ.)
See: www.roperscientific.com.

• Robert Miskelly is Technical Marketing Manager at Basler Vision Technologies_-Machine Vision Components.(Exton, PA in the U.S.).
See: www.baslerweb.com.

• Electronic camera design and marketing veteran Don Lake is Strategic Technology Manager for STMicroelectronics(San Jose, California, in the U.S.). In an entirely different role, he's been a Contributing Editor to this magazine since 1989.
See: www.st.com.

This magazine has been tracking development of the flexible, trusty (and much-trusted!) CCD imager for over 14 years, and there's no argument that the extension of its capabilities has been a phenomenon. In recent years, of course, there have been those who've suggested that new opportunities for extending the mature format are more limited, or even that CCDs' days are numbered, in the face of competition from CMOS, etc.. In this roundtable, we've invited some key authorities to fill us in on their ideas of what can and will be coming next for what remains, despite its maturity, far and away the most relied-upon imager in place in both industrial/scientific and commercial imaging fields.

EXTENDING THE TECHNOLOGY

Barry Mazor, Editor-in-Chief, Advanced Imaging: In sensitivity, in resolution, in transfer speeds, and in image integration, the CCD has seen enormous increases in capability already. In which of these areas do you expect to see the most significant further progress in the next 1-3 years? If you'd rather suggest another technical capability as the key one to see being extended, don't hesitate to fill us in!