Engineers at Photron (San Diego, CA, USA) have developed a high-speed camera that is capable of capturing images at one million frames per second.
The company’s new Fastcam IS-1M camera system is a 312 x 260-pixel resolution ISIS (in situ image storage) CCD sensor system designed to capture a range of ultrahigh-speed phenomena. Its 100-frame image buffer provides adequate storage for the majority of ultrahigh-speed phenomena such as inkjet droplet measurement, combustion, crack propagation, or blast dynamics.
The key feature of the new camera is the sensor. Here, the signal storage areas for the recorded images are incorporated within the chip. Light entering the light-sensitive part of the ISIS CCD is converted into an electrical signal before being transmitted sequentially to the storage areas immediately adjacent to the sensitive area of the pixel before being transmitted to the output stage.
This "in situ" storage method avoids the sequential backlog, caused by the limited number of output circuits of conventional CCDs, enabling much higher frame rates to be achieved.
-- By Dave Wilson, Senior Editor, Vision Systems Design
