Research institute Imec has released a prototype hyperspectral imager for snapshot and video acquisition, which it claims is an industry first. The CMOS-based imager with integrated hyperspectral filters is suitable for multiple industrial vision applications, says the company.
Imec is currently sampling the line scan version of its hyperspectral imaging solution, offering a ready-to-use evaluation kit to the industry to line scan and analyse specific sample material.
The prototype hyperspectral imager captures an entire multispectral image at one discrete point in time. The imager is achieved by applying a hyperspectral filter in a novel tiled lay-out on a commercially available CMOS-based image sensor (Cmosis CMV2000, 2 megapixel, 340fps). The imager and off-the-shelf fore-optics simultaneously duplicates the scene onto each filter tile, acquiring multispectral image cubes of 256 x 256 pixels over 32 bands in the spectral range of 600-1,000nm at up to 340 cubes per second — compliant to normal machine vision illumination levels. Due to its simple cube assembly process, the camera is able to acquire real-time hyperspectral video.
Imec’s line scan solution monolithically integrates hyperspectral filters on a Cmosis CMV4000 imager (4 megapixel, 180fps). It scans 100 spectral bands in the 600-1,000nm wavelength range. The filter bandwidth (full width half max) is about 10nm across the spectral range, with a transmission efficiency of approximately 85 per cent. The speed of the system corresponds to an equivalent speed of 2,000 lines per second.
