A high-speed video microsystem

Abstract

This paper describes a complete fast imaging microsystem for biological applications. The main goal of this microsystem is to provide, at a very low cost, a high-speed camera (600 frames s −1 ) with an associated storage data system. We attained this goal by using a standard area CCD image sensor connected to a PC-compatible computer.

Continuous acquisition and storage of uncompressed image data based on a personal computer equipped with a CCD camera and an external hard disk drive

“…This sufficient storage time is a result of using a hard disk as a storage device. From this viewpoint the present system is complementary to a digital high-speed video camera system [17][18][19]. The latter system gives a much faster frame rate, but a much shorter storage time because of the usage of digital memory as storage device.…”