The performance of industrial camera systems is continually improving. Advances in the electronics sensors and computer interfaces are providing more resolving power increased dynamic range broader spectral sensitivity higher speed and easier data collection. As a result these cameras are finding their way into more and varied systems and applications. The cameras are becoming a system ''component''. Historically the performance parameters used in characterizing these cameras have been complex and abstzact usually speaking to the basic physics of the sensors. Such metrics are good for the sensor and camera developer but are not optimum for th. application engineer or end user. There is a need for more useful easier to understand and standardized metrics to be used in characterizing th. cameras and for writing their specifications. A lab has been setup at the Xotion Analysis Systems Division of Eastman Kodak to characterize the Kodak line of industrial and high speed camera systems. In addition to the more traditional measurements two new metrics referred to as a composite ''rendering error'' and image object ''measurement error'' are being used to assess and specify the systems. 1 . HARATERIZING CAMERAS The basic task of characterizing cameras or complete imaging systems can be block-diagramed as in FIGURE 1. Images are generated by appropriate optics captur. d by tha camera digitized by a frame grabber and fed onto a computer for data analysis and reduction. The

Date Published: 12 August 1992
PDF: 16 pages
Proc. SPIE 1656, High-Resolution Sensors and Hybrid Systems, (12 August 1992); doi: 10.1117/12.135943

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1656:
High-Resolution Sensors and Hybrid Systems
Morley M. Blouke; Winchyi Chang; Laurence J. Thorpe; Rajinder P. Khosla, Editor(s)