New near infrared/colour multispectral line scan cameras.

Two new series of line scan cameras added to the Stemmer camera range provide enhanced multispectral imaging capabilities for industrial imaging applications. The Sweep+ from JAI and the Quadlinear Piranha4 from Teledyne DALSA both allow simultaneous capture of colour and near infrared (NIR) images. A rich choice of imaging technologies, resolution and sensor types means that the most appropriate camera can be chosen for the application.

These quadlinear and prism-based 4 channel cameras provide the benefit of simultaneous feature detection in the visible and the NIR spectrum. This enhances detection capability for a wide range of applications, including print, bank note inspection, electronics manufacturing, food and material sorting. In particular, the NIR channel allows the detection of defects that cannot be seen in the visible spectrum, making these cameras particularly powerful for both sorting and inspection.

The unique combination of NIR and visible imaging in a single unit allows machine vision developers to design compact systems using one instead of two separate cameras. In addition, by utilizing a single sensor, these cameras can make use of standard lenses with infrared correction, which leads to lower prices and a larger choice of lenses.

The Piranha4 quadlinear line scan camera features a 4 line CMOS sensor with wafer-level dichroic filters to provide red, green, and blue (RGB) outputs plus a NIR channel for multispectral imaging. It is available in 2k resolution, with 14.08 micron pixel size and delivers a maximum line rate of 70 kHz. The camera also features sub-pixel spatial correction, horizontal parallax correction, multiple AOI and ROI, and independent exposure time for each colour channel. Flat field correction can be done on each channel or as a group.

The new Sweep+ models are prism-based industrial colour line scan cameras. These cameras capture the red, green, blue and NIR bands in four separate channels simultaneously through the same optical path. Sweep+ cameras are available with a variety of sensor resolutions (from 512 to 4096 pixels) and sensor types (CCD and CMOS). All cameras in the range feature one-push automatic white balance, flat-field correction and colour shading compensation and binning functions for increased sensor sensitivity.