High-Speed Solid State Camera Systems for Digital Photogrammetry

For many applications in machine vision, digital photogrammetry and scientific research image sequences of rapidly moving objects have to be acquired with high temporal resolution. If the standard video rate (30 frames/sec NTSC resp. 25 frames/sec CCIR) is not sufficient, high-speed solid state cameras may be considered offering frame rates of up to 15,000 frames per second. As the processing or data reduction of their images will usually not be possible in real time, appropriate analog or digital image sequence storage devices have to be discussed. One of the most important features of a high-speed solid state camera system is the data rate. While the systems with the highest data rates still come with analog storage on video tape, systems with digital storage on RAM or realtime disks are preferable from the aspects of accuracy and data handling. This overview will present some high-speed solid state camera systems with data rates ranging from 8 MB/sec up to 175 MB/sec, frame rates of 100 to 15,000 images per second, sensor sizes of 64 x 64 to 756 x 287 pixels, digital and analogue data storage including an own scheme with cascaded standard cameras, compare their technical data and discuss their applicability and restrictions.