An Instrument for the Characterization and Calibration of Optical Sensors

This paper presents the development of a hardware/software system for the characterization of the electronic response of optical (camera) sensors such as matrix and linear color and monochrome Charge Coupled Device (CCD) or Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS). The electronic response of a sensor is required for inspection purposes. It also allows the design and calibration of the integrating device to achieve the desired performance. The proposed instrument equipment fulfills the most recent European Machine Vision Association (EMVA) 1288 standard ver. 3.1: the spatial non uniformity of the illumination ΔE must be under 3%, and the sensor must achieve an f-number of 8.0 concerning the light source. The following main innovations have achieved this: an Ulbricht sphere providing a uniform light distribution (irradiation) of 99.54%; an innovative illuminator with proper positioning of color Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) and control electronics; and a flexible C# program to analyze the sensor parameters, namely Quantum Efficiency, Overall System Gain, Temporal Dark Noise, Dark Signal Non Uniformity (DSNU1288), Photo Response Non-Uniformity (PRNU1288), Maximum achievable Signal to Noise Ratio (SNRmax), Absolute sensitivity threshold, Saturation Capacity, Dynamic Range, and Dark Current. This new instrument has allowed a camera manufacturer to design, integrate, and inspect numerous devices and camera models (Necta, Celera, and Aria).

[1]  Gunnar Ritt,et al.  Estimation of Lens Stray Light with Regard to the Incapacitation of Imaging Sensors , 2020, Sensors.

[2]  Biao Huang,et al.  System Identification , 2000, Control Theory for Physicists.

[3]  Standard for Characterization of Image Sensors and Cameras Release 3 . 1 , 2010 .

[4]  J. Bartlett,et al.  Product information , 2001, Transplantation.

[5]  Weifeng Feng,et al.  Investigation of LED Light Output Performance Characteristics Under Different Alternating Current Regulation Modes , 2011, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

[6]  Chen Xu,et al.  Accurate camera calibration with distortion models using sphere images , 2015 .

[7]  M.V.V. RadhaKrishna,et al.  A Review on Image Processing Sensor , 2021 .

[8]  Arnaldo G. Leal-Junior,et al.  A Comparative Study of Markerless Systems Based on Color-Depth Cameras, Polymer Optical Fiber Curvature Sensors, and Inertial Measurement Units: Towards Increasing the Accuracy in Joint Angle Estimation , 2019, Electronics.

[9]  Paul-Gerald Dittrich,et al.  Extended characterization of multispectral resolving filter-on-chip snapshot-mosaic CMOS cameras , 2019, Defense + Commercial Sensing.

[10]  Jagrat Mehta,et al.  CCD or CMOS Image sensor for photography , 2015, 2015 International Conference on Communications and Signal Processing (ICCSP).

[11]  Gunther Notni,et al.  Adaptive test bench for characterizing image processing sensors , 2018, Commercial + Scientific Sensing and Imaging.

[12]  Glenn D. Boreman,et al.  Design of an integrating sphere as a uniform illumination source , 1997 .

[13]  Chern-Lin Chen,et al.  Robust LED backlight driver with low output voltage drop and hig output current accuracy , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Conference on Sustainable Energy Technologies.

[14]  In-Hwan Oh.  An analysis of current accuracies in peak and hysteretic current controlled power LED drivers , 2008, 2008 Twenty-Third Annual IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition.

[15]  Michele Lanzetta,et al.  Integrated visual nanometric three-dimensional positioning and inspection in the automated assembly of AFM probe arrays , 2010 .

[16]  Maik Rosenberger,et al.  EMVA 1288 camera characterisation and the influences of radiometric camera characteristics on geometric measurements , 2016 .

[17]  Andrea Rossi,et al.  Minimum centroid neighborhood for minimum zone sphericity , 2014 .

[18]  Guoqiang Zhang,et al.  A Stratified Approach for Camera Calibration Using Spheres , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing.

[19]  Zeynep Altintas,et al.  Recent Progress in Optical Sensors for Biomedical Diagnostics , 2020, Micromachines.