Design of an image sensor for an ultra-high-speed and ultra-high-sensitive video microscope

This paper outlines a special microscope under development, named "Ultra-high-speed bionanoscope" for ultra-highspeed imaging in biological applications, and preliminary design of the image sensor, which is the key component in the system. The ultra-high-speed bionanoscope consists of two major subsystems: a video camera operating at more than 10 Mfps with ultra-high-sensitivity and the special microscope to minimize loss of light for seriously reduced illumination light energy due to the ultra-high-speed imaging. The ultra-high-frame rate is achieved by introducing a special structure of a CCD imager, the ISIS, In-situ Storage Image Sensor, invented by Etoh and Mutoh. The ISIS has an array of pixels each of which equips with a slanted linear CCD storage area for more than 100 image signals for reproduction of smoothly moving images. The ultra-high-sensitivity of the sensor of less than 10 photons is achieved by introducing three existing technologies, backside-illumination, cooling, and the CCM, Charge Carrier Multiplication invented by Hynecek.