Jul 31 2008
Today Andor Technology plc (Andor), a world leader in scientific imaging and spectroscopy solutions, announces the implementation of the 'Cropped Sensor' Mode as a standard, user-selectable feature with its iXon+, Newton and iKon range of high-performance EMCCD and CCD cameras. This highly flexible and specialized readout mode is capable of achieving extremely fast continuous frame rates (typically sub-millisecond exposures) of either images or spectra.
In this mode, the user defines through software a ‘sub-array’ from within the full sensor area, such that it encompasses the region of the image where light is actually falling and change is rapidly occurring, e.g. a trapped Bose Einstein condensate, a ‘calcium spark’ within a living cell, or a dispersed spectral signature. The sensor subsequently “imagines” that it is of this smaller defined array size, achieved through specially optimized readout patterns, and reads out at a proportionally faster frame rate. The smaller the defined array size, the faster the frame rate achievable.
Cropped Sensor Mode has the end result of achieving much faster sustainable speeds than that obtainable in a conventional ‘sub-array’ / ROI readout mode. Combined with EMCCDs, this mode also offers potential for replacement of PMT or APD detectors with a higher sensitivity alternative.
Dr Colin Coates, Market Development Manager within Andor Technology, said ‘The addition of the Cropped Sensor Mode to our existing camera families brings a useful functionality: the ability to dramatically boost speed by defining a sub region in situations where only part of the sensor is accepting light is central to some exciting areas of research, such as the field of super-resolution nanoscopy’.
For more information, please visit www.andor.com/cropped_sensors.