High-speed imaging
Capture fast-moving details with our advanced SPAD cameras.
Eliminate the tradeoff between image blur and image noise
The high quality of today’s digital cameras can quickly deteriorate in challenging conditions such as low light or fast motion. These conditions make it difficult to find the ideal exposure duration; longer exposures create blur, while shorter exposures increase noise. Both negatively impact vision applications.
Single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) image sensors address these challenges with zero read noise and the ability to detect individual photons with precise timing, enabling clearer and more accurate images even in low-light conditions.
Finally, to resolve the tradeoff between image blur and image noise, an image burst is captured, collecting images with single photon precision and then correcting for movement occurring either in the scene or by the camera.
Conventional cameras average photons over fixed exposure intervals, leading to motion blur if the object or camera moves during that time. Shortening exposure times to freeze motion while maintaining frame rate increases read noise, especially in low light, resulting in noisy images that are difficult to use for vision tasks.
Benefits of SPAD technology
for this application
Short exposure time
Achieve exposure times down to nanoseconds.
Zero readout noise
Provides clear, high-quality images in low-light conditions due to zero readout noise.
Ultra high speed
SPAD image sensors offer frame rates up to 100'000 fps, enabling high-speed imaging.
Examples / Application results
Quanta burst photography
Algorithms that align the binary frames to minimize noise and motion blur, while producing a high-bit-depth, high-dynamic-range, and super-resolved image. This technique allows for high-quality images in challenging scenarios, such as low-light and high-speed motion.
Quanta video restoration
A trainable network built on the ideas of classical quanta restoration methods, i.e., pre-filtering, flow estimation, fusion, and refinement.
Fourier analysis in single photon imaging
Imaging with high sensitivity, at a high frame rate, and with a high dynamic range.
Recommended products
SPAD 512
A complete camera with a 512×512 SPAD pixel array. The camera features fine gating circuitry to measure time-varying events, such as FLIM, and double FPGA read-out for the highest throughput. This camera is a perfect addition to any widefield microscopy system.
References
Ma, Sizhuo, et al.
ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), vol. 39, doi: 10.1145/3386569.3392470. (2020).
Chennuri, Prateek, et al.
ArXiv:2410.14994v1 [eess.IV]. (License: CC BY 4.0) (2024).
Laurenzis, M. and Bacher, E.
Opt. Express 32, 26525-26536 (2024).
