LIFE SCIENCES
SciMeasure specializes in developing and manufacturing high speed and low noise cameras that are sensitive for capturing fast biological activities, such as action potentials and other electrical activities. Depending on the light level and the time course of the activity, we offer a wide range of CCD and CMOS cameras for a broad range of Life Science applications such as voltage imaging and ionic imaging (e.g. Ca2+, Na+). This includes imaging of genetically expressed fluorescence probes (e.g. ArcLight). See the RedShirtImaging website for complete turnkey systems.
CCD Performance
SciMeasure cameras are designed to give the best performance possible in real world situations. Focusing on multi-port traditional CCDs means that our cameras yield better signal-to-noise at real world signal levels than CCDs that rely on electron multiplication. Focusing on back-illuminated CCDs means that our cameras have much better QE, MTF and cosmetics than all front-illuminated sensors, including CMOS sensors. Focusing on deeper-well CCDs with large pixels means that our cameras have a higher real dynamic range and higher signal-to-noise than small pixel CCDs and CMOS sensors. Large pixels also make it much easier to couple the target to the sensor.
[chart of CCD operating ranges, links to camera models, coming soon]
CMOS performance
SciMeasure cameras also use CMOS sensors, which provide very high frame rates that are just not attainable with CCDs. They can offer very low read noise or very large well depth, also beyond the reach of CCDs. In addition to the 2k X 2k DaVinci CMOS sensor, SciMeasure uses 128x128 CMOS sensors which run at 10 kHz full frame rate (5 kHz with CDS). The high sensitivity sensor uses 15-micron pixels to obtain a large fill factor and thus a high QE without using distorting microlenses while the deep well sensor uses 128 micron pixels to yield high QE but also accommodate up to 100 million electron wells. The high sensitivity sensors yield 2-3 e- readnoise while the 128-micron deep well sensor yields well depths of 800 ke-, 10 Me- and 100 Me- per pixel, which are user programmable by row. The high sensitivity sensors also feature on-chip binning and Non-Destructive Read (NDR). The on-chip binning feature allows the user to trade off resolution for speed and well depth since the binned pixel well depth scales by the number of pixels being binned.
[chart of CMOS operating ranges, links to camera models, coming soon]