spL2048-39km Basler Line Scan Camera

The Basler sprint Series Line Scan Cameras includes units with 2k, 4k, and 8k resolution and different line rates. All sprint variants are based on a next generation dual line CMOS sensor designed exclusively for Basler.

The Basler sprint Series is aimed at applications where high sensitivity, excellent image quality, and the highest speed are required. This speed and image quality let sprint camera users increase efficiency and throughput in many vision applications.

To reach Basler's high goals for the sprint sensor, the positive properties of current sensor technologies were combined. The well-known image quality of CCD sensors was combined with the high speed of CMOS to achieve a "best of both worlds" result. The sprint development project resulted in a unique sensor design with a high QE (quantum efficiency) of up to 60%, a fill factor of 100%, and a very high SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) at low light conditions. This means that users will see very low noise levels and unique speed levels. A maximum line rate of 140 kHz can be reached at either 2k or 4k resolution. With 8k resolution a line rate of up to 70 kHz can be reached. The fact that there is no gap between the two active lines in the sensor makes it easy to fit the camera into both existing and new applications with no spatial artifacts.

The AOI feature lets the user focus precisely on the area of an object that is important to them. This means that the amount of data transmitted by the camera will be reduced and that the image processing application in the user's host PC will not be overloaded with unnecessary data. In addition, the user may see a linear increase in the camera's speed by reducing the AOI.

The time delayed lime sum feature uses the dual line sensor to scan each object line twice in a time delayed fashion. The double information is combined in the sprint's internal memory and this technique doubles the sprint's sensitivity. It also significantly reduces noise and results in a 3 dB increase in the SNR.

With the time delayed line averaging feature, time delayed line summing is performed and then the doubled information is averaged. The advantages are an increase of 3 dB in the SNR and an increase of 3 dB in the dynamic range.

Both horizontal and vertical binning are available. Either two pixels or four pixels can be binned together.

DSNU (dark signal non-uniformity) and PRNU (photo response non-uniformity) can be performed to correct for the non-homogeneous behavior of lighting, optics, and the sensor that can be present in real world applications. Shading or vignetting caused by lenses can be compensated by the enhanced shading correction (ESC). The wide range of the ESC is very helpful for image processing, especially with larger sensors and lenses with shorter focal lengths.

A Bayer pattern filter is used to create the color version of the sprint. One line in the sensor reports red and green information and the second line reports green and blue information. Image data in a raw format is transferred to the frame grabber where color processing happens in a fast, reliable way similar to common color area scan cameras. Several color creation schemes can be implemented. Depending on the application needs, the active color concept can focus on speed and reducing the amount of data, or it can focus on higher color fidelity. For higher color fidelity, each object line is scanned twice, thus two times color information is available for each image point. This approach has a big advantage because standard lenses and frame grabbers can be used. Because there is no gap between the sensor's two active lines, adapting the camera to your application/object is easy and no spatial correction is needed.