Million-frame-per-second CCD camera with 16 frames of storage

Ultrafast imaging is an important need for the development, control, and evaluation of modern air-deliverable weapons systems. Recent advances in optical imaging such as speckle interferometry can potentially improve DoD capability to deliver munitions and armaments to targets at long ranges, and under adverse seeing conditions. Moderate density arrays of at least 100 by 100 pixels and frame rates of at least 1 MHz are required. Ultrafast imaging is also required for flow field optical image analysis for hypersonic propulsion systems. Silicon Mountain Design (SMD) has built such an imager so that high quality images can be obtained for relatively low cost. The SMD-64k1M camera is capable of imaging 1,000,000 frames per second using a 256 by 256 array with the ability to store 16 frames with true 12 bits of dynamic range. This camera allows researchers to capture multiple high speed events using solid state technology housed in a 53 cubic inch package. A brief technical overview of the imager and results are presented in this paper.