NASA 1996 SBIR Phase I

PROJECT TITLE : Ultra-High resolution Color Back-illuminated CCD Camera

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)

PixelVision, Inc., in affiliation with Scientific Imaging Technologies, Inc. (SITe), world leaders in the manufacture of high performance CCDs and CCD cameras, propose for this Phase I SBIR effort to design a flexible, easy to use, affordable, 25 million pixel format, ultra-high resolution video rate (UHRDC) CCD imaging system for NASA space flight missions. This sensor will be manufactured and demonstrated in the subsequent Phase II SBIR effort.

Despite the numerous advantages of 'going digital', digital broadcast cameras and digital still cameras have yet to achieve the image quality of film based systems and such cameras have not found widespread acceptance. The reasons for this are well understood, existing solid state sensors currently do not have sufficient pixel densities nor frame rates, transmission media does not have sufficient bandwidths to handle the required data rates, the processing power required to compress the data rates to usable bandwidths does not exist, high resolution displays are inadequate, and storage media with high enough bandwidth and storage capacity do not exist.

Incorporating the evolutionary direction and requirements of video information technologies and emerging video standards, PixelVision proposes to design a flexible, easy-to-use, ultra-high resolution, large bandwidth CCD sensor and CCD camera that will integrate with the emerging information system technologies as they mature.

When development of the Ultra-high resolution digital CCD (UHRDC) is executed in the Phase II SBIR effort, it will intercept the technological evolution curves of the enabling image processing technologies to allow for an affordable, flexible, and manufacturable UHRDC camera to be realized.

The development of the UHRDC sensor will expand markets requiring affordable high performance CCD sensors including, fluoroscopy, DNA sequencing, biological fluorescence and Raman microscopy, HDTV cameras, x-ray microscopes, medical x-ray cameras (e.g., spot mammography), dental x-ray cameras, document and graphic archiving scanners, ultra large format astronomical imaging and spectroscopy cameras, space borne imaging camera systems, 35mm still and motion picture cameras, industrial robotics cameras, PC cameras and scanners.

James R. Janesick
Chief Scientific Officer
PixelVision, Inc
15250 NW Greenbrier Parkway
Beaverton, OR 97006

George M. Williams
General Manager
PixelVision, Inc
15250 NW Greenbrier Parkway
Beaverton, OR 97006