The sCMOS sensor

Conventional imaging technologies, such as charge-coupled devices (CCDs), tend to be good at one thing but not another. With CCDs, for example, it is possible to have great signal-to-noise ratios, but because the frames have to be read out one at a time, the technique cannot operate at high speed. Conversely, when CCDs are pushed to faster frame rates, resolution and field of view are sacrificed. One breakthrough imaging technology, that can outperform most scientific imaging devices on the market today is scientific CMOS (sCMOS). Based on a new generation of CMOS design and process technology, sCMOS sensors have been developed to overcome the drawbacks of traditional CMOS image sensors. The result is that sCMOS devices offer high sensitivity, fast frame rates, extremely low noise, high resolution and a large field of view all at the same time – perfect for high-fidelity quantitative scientific measurements. It has a sensor with 5.5 megapixels each just 6.5 μm in size, offering a very large field of view and high resolution. It has an exceptionally low read noise of as little as 1 electron RMS (the standard unit in this context) without amplification, even at high speeds of 30 frames per second, making it better than the best CCDs. It also operates at up to 100 frames per second, with a read noise of 1.4 electrons RMS. Thanks to a unique dual-amplifier architecture, which basically splits the sensor into two independently readable halves while allowing each pixel to be sampled simultaneously by both high and low gain amplifiers, the device also has a much higher dynamic range than a CCD with similarly small pixels. Moreover, the image can be read out in two different ways that are normally mutually incompatible: in “rolling” mode, where different lines of the array are exposed at different times as the read out “wave” sweeps through the sensor, and in “global” mode, where each pixel begins and ends its exposure at the same time.

Fine fare The technique of “Photostimulation” can provide powerful images of cells, such as these dendrites protruding from a nerve cell.