THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGH-SPEED 100 FPS CCD CAMERA

This paper describes the development of a high-speed CCD digital camer a system. The system has been designed to use CCDs from various manufa cturers with minimal modifications. The first camera built on this des ign utilizes a Thomson 512 x 512 pixel CCD as its sensor, which is rea d out from two parallel outputs at a speed of 15 MHz/pixel/output. The data undergo correlated double sampling after which it is digitized i nto 12 bits. The throughput of the system translates into 60 MB/second , which is either stored directly in a PC or transferred to a custom-d esigned VXI module. The PC data acquisition version of the camera can collect sustained data in real time that is limited to the memory inst alled in the PC. The VXI version of the camera, also controlled by a P C, stores 512 MB of real-time data before it must be read out to the P C disk storage. The uncooled CCD can be used either with lenses for vi sible light imaging or with a phosphor screen for X-ray imaging. This camera has been tested with a phosphor screen coupled to a fiber-optic face plate for high-resolution, high-speed X-ray imaging. The camera is controlled through a custom event-driven user-friendly Windows pack age. The pixel clock speed can be changed from 1 to 15 MHz. The noise was measured to be 1.05 bits at a 13.3 MHz pixel clock. This paper wil l describe the electronics, software, and characterizations that have been performed using both visible and X-ray photons.