Low Light Level Color Imaging with Electron Bombarded CCD

Capturing color visible imagery in low light is becoming extremely important in both military and commercial applications. Currently, both military and commercial requirements for low-light-level applications are met with image intensifiers coupled to charge-coupled devices (CCDs). These systems do not provide color images and suffer from degradation of contrast, resolution, and signal-to-noise ratio. Moreover, adding color to existing image intensifiers would result in a bulky and expensive solution to the low light imaging need. SMD proposes development of a 3 chip color camera using a new type of sensor based on operating a CCD in the Electron Bombarded CCD (EBCCD) mode. Three dichroic color filters would decompose the input image into red, green, and blue components and direct the components to 3 EBCCD focal plane array sensors. The resulting imagery of an EBCCD is superior to that of image intensifier tubes and would be compatible with existing commercial off the shelf (COTS) video camera systems and software. The EBCCD offers high-contrast, low-light-level images. This performance is achieved by offering nearly noiseless gain (gain of greater than several thousand is possible). Further, the EBCCD can be operated in high light conditions providing a robust device without the problem of flash blinding.