Novel Imaging Sensor for High Rate and High Resolution Applications

Square CCD and CMOS arrays are commonly employed to perform two-dimensional imaging tasks as they offer high image quality and spatial resolution. For more specific applications, where the requirement is to locate the position of a fast moving, single luminous spot over a delimited area (single particle positioning, beam spot monitoring, ...) such kind of devices is somewhat cumbersome to use, due to the huge number of pixels needed to be read in order to get high resolution the spatial position of the luminous signal. The data throughput limits the use of pixel arrays to those applications where a time resolution of a few hundred frames per second is sufficient. In this contribution we propose a novel device, based on solid state sensors, able to perform two dimensional imaging of a luminous spot with a frame rate (first prototype) of about 10 kHz and a spatial resolution better than 800*800 points over a 25mm diameter circular field of view. A full performance characterization of the first prototype is also reported.