Programmable High Speed Large-Format CCD Camera

Programmable high speed, large format Charge Coupled devices (CCDs) have numerous applications in image processing, surveillance, and reconnaissance applications. Such devices are also valuable tools in medical imaging and high speed event analysis. Motion or change detection is of definite interest in security applications, and high speed inspection is a priority in assembly lines and in evaluating surveillance imagery. Ideally, such cameras would also allow the user to trade-off speed for spatial resolution. One specific application of particular interest to the U.S. Army Missile Command is optical correlator systems. The proposed programmable high speed CCD camera would be employed in the optical correlator system as the input detector and or the correlation plane detector. The overall goal is the development of a programmable 1024 x 1024 pixel CCD camera system, including on-board frame subtraction, capable of at least 200 frames per second framing rates for application in optical correlators and other fast imaging applications. The Phase I objective is to demonstrate real time frame subtraction and the tradeoff between speed and spatial resolution by binning pixels in the CCD during readout. A further Phase I objective is to carry out the conceptual design of a camera system that would be designed and built in Phase II. BENEFITS: Programmable, high spatial resolution, fast framing digital cameras have broad commercial and military applkation, including motion analysis, surveillance, and medical imaging and optical data processing and computing