Low Noise: An Integral Part of High-Performance CCD (HCCD) Camera Systems

1 Noise is composed of undesirable signal components that arise from various sources in an electronic imaging system. The figure of merit that dictates the ultimate performance of a system is signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), which describes the quality of a measurement (see Figure 1). In CCD imagine, SNR refers to the relative magnitude of the signal compared to the uncertainty in that signal on a per-pixel basis. Specifically, it is the ratio of the measured signal to the overall measured noise (frame-to-frame) at that pixel. High SNR is particularly important in applications requiring precise light measurements. When calculating overall SNR, all noise sources must be taken into consideration. The three primary sources of noise in a CCD imaging system are photon noise, dark noise, and read noise.