​​Lanoptik Non-cooled CCD Camera for Low Light Applications

Cooled CCD camera has good SNR with long exposure. This feature makes it widely used in fields of low light application such as fluorescence imaging, astronomical photography, chemiluminescence, scientific research and so on. But cooled CCD camera also has many points that make users have a headache. It is very expensive, bulky, easy damaged by moisture condensation and must be plug-in high-power refrigeration power (This means users must carry heavy batteries for outdoor use.). So, is it really need refrigeration under long time exposure? After a long time research, Lanoptik Technologies has successfully broken through the technical difficulties of SNR reducing under long time exposure and this is a real surprise to the industry.

Below are the images (Figure 2 & Figure 3) comparison of 3 brands of CCD camera equipped with high sensitive monochrome CCD SONY ICX285. The left image is taken by Lanoptik's un-cooling camera MCX151M (Figure 1), the middle one is taken by a cooled CCD camera made in China, and the right one is taken by non-cooled CCD camera Made in Germany. Among of them, the cooled camera makes CCD’s temperature 0”C and the other two is without refrigeration.

Comparison I

Exposure Time: 60 seconds;

Illuminance: 0.06 lux;

Aperture: F16;

Ambient Temperature: 25℃;

Frame Rate: 7.5 fps

Comparison II

Exposure Time: 120 seconds;

Illuminance: 0.03lux;

Aperture: F16;

Ambient Temperature: 25℃;

Frame Rate: 7.5 fps

From the above comparison images, we can see that the image quality of Lanoptik's MCX151M is better than traditional refrigeration CCD camera even at 120 seconds exposure time. And the non-cooled camera has the advantages which cooled camera lack of: more affordable price, more reliable performance, smaller volume and power consumption, without external power supply. This is not only a cost-effective choice, but also a great facilitate for the users.* Figure 4 is the image taken by non-cooled color ICX285 CCD camera MCX151 with Zeiss Primo Star FL fluorescence microscope (Exposure time: 60 seconds).

It has been proved that LANOPTIK non-cooled CCD camera provides outstanding performance for low light applications. In addition, the high-speed of this kind of camera can reach to 20 fps at full resolution. Compared with cameras of other several manufactures, this camera’s focusing also more convenient which make it fully achieve high speed with low noise. This technology also has been applied to Lanoptik's Pixit series CCD camera MCX141 (Sony ICX205) and MCX511 (Sony ICX282) with buffer memory.