Strategic options towards an affordable high-performance infrared camera

Abstract

The promise of infrared (IR) imaging attaining low-cost akin to CMOS sensors success has been hampered by the inability to achieve cost advantages that are necessary for crossover from military and industrial applications into the consumer and mass-scale commercial realm despite well documented advantages. Banpil Photonics is developing affordable IR cameras by adopting new strategies to speed-up the decline of the IR camera cost curve. We present a new short-wave IR (SWIR) camera; 640x512 pixel InGaAs uncooled system that is high sensitivity low noise (<50e-), high dynamic range (100 dB), high-frame rates (> 500 frames per second (FPS)) at full resolution, and low power consumption (< 1 W) in a compact system. This camera paves the way towards mass market adoption by not only demonstrating highperformance IR imaging capability value add demanded by military and industrial application, but also illuminates a path towards justifiable price points essential for consumer facing application industries such as automotive, medical, and security imaging adoption. Among the strategic options presented include new sensor manufacturing technologies that scale favorably towards automation, multi-focal plane array compatible readout electronics, and dense or ultra-small pixel pitch devices.

In Vivo Imaging Evaluation of Fluorescence Intensity at Tail Emission of Near-Infrared-I (NIR-I) Fluorophores in a Porcine Model

“…Contrary to NIR-I cameras, charge-coupled devices (CCD) cannot be used in NIR-II imaging systems since they are largely insensitive to wavelengths over 1000 nm [ 26 ]. Consequently, NIR-II systems require the use of more sophisticated and higher-cost detectors, such as a compound semiconductor build-up of InGaAs or HgCdTe [ 27 ]. At present, the majority of NIR-II imaging systems have been engineered for fluorescence microscopy, some of them customized for preclinical studies, and very few are available in clinical settings [ 11 ].…”