IMEC International of Leuven, Belgium showed off a unique hyperspectral camera at the recent Photonics West conference in San Francisco, which combines a single-chip SOC sensor, the CMOSIS CMV4000, with spectral filters than be layered into the camera to emphasize certain frequency bands.  Hyperspectral cameras combine traditional imaging with spectroscopy to allow simultaneous imaging in visible bands and other bands such as infrared.  Traditionally, hyperspectral cameras have been too large to use in real-time image acquisition, though the new camera should be appropriate for use in very small embedded systems.

The CMV4000 is a 4-megapixel sensor with a maximum frame rate of 180 frames per second.  Spectral filters are post-processed at the wafer level on top of the image sensor.  IMEC developed a filter with 100 spectral bands between 560 nm and 1000 nm.  The full-width, half-max bandwidth of the filter ranges from 3 nm at 560 nm to 20 nm at 1000 nm, with a transmission efficiency of 85 percent.  The scanning speed of the demonstrated system is equivalent to 2000 lines per second.