Eastman Kodak Company has introduced an image sensor with low-light sensitivity developed through the integration of two advanced image sensor technologies.
By combining the Kodak Truesense Color Filter Pattern – a technology that increases a colour sensor's sensitivity to light – with Kodak's latest interline transfer CCD pixel design, a new class of cameras is available providing improved image quality under demanding lighting conditions, such as found in traffic monitoring and surveillance applications. This technology integration is based on the 1080p format Kodak KAI-02150 image sensor.
The Kodak Truesense Color Filter Pattern increases a sensor's light sensitivity by adding panchromatic, or 'clear' pixels to the red, green, and blue elements that form the image sensor array. Since these pixels are sensitive to all wavelengths of visible light, they collect a significantly higher proportion of the light striking the sensor. By matching this pixel arrangement with advanced software algorithms from Kodak, users can engineer a 2x to 4x increase in light sensitivity (from one to two photographic stops) compared to a standard Bayer colour sensor, providing a performance advantage for light starved applications.
The Kodak KAI-02150 image sensor provides full support for the 1080p image capture standard, supporting 1,920 x 1,080 pixel (16:9 aspect ratio) image capture at 60fps – twice the frame rate of standard HD video. The sensor also provides broad dynamic range and excellent imaging performance – parameters that are critical for applied and professional markets.
The KAI-02150 is part of a full family of CCD image sensors based on the Kodak Truesense 5.5µm interline transfer CCD Platform, an advanced technology that offers advances in pixel size, frame rate, and image quality compared to Kodak's previous generation of technology. This family of five interline CCD image sensors – ranging from the 1 Megapixel Kodak KAI-01050 image sensor to the 8 Megapixel Kodak KAI-08050 image sensor – all share common pin-out and electrical configurations.
