Intensified Color Camera

InterScience, Inc., 

Troy, NY

The Intensified Color Camera is a compact sensor which combines the capabilities of high spatial resolution image intensification with color sensitivity. This results in an improved imaging capability which retains color sensitivity at low light levels.

• Conventional image intensifiers provide a monochromatic image. In many situations, such as surveys of space and earth, considerable information is contained in the spectral data that would be lost in monochrome.
• With initial support from NASA, we recently complete development of technology that intensifies and preserves color information in images. The design is based on a proprietary color filter and has now been conceptually extended to real-time video, including IR sensitivity. 
• System performance was demonstrated by intensified "before-and-after" images. The "before" images were in conventional monochrome. The "after" images demonstrated restoration of color to the intensified images. One demonstration was produced with 80 millilux of illumination. Another demonstration was produced with only 15 millilux of illumination. 

• InterScience is actively seeking a partner to help commercialize its intensified color imaging  technology.

 

• Improvements in the sensitivity and resolution of image intensifiers  has led to introduction of the technology into a broad range of products.  At the present time, the principal application has been in night vision goggles and gun sights used by the military and law enforcement community. 
• Increasingly, however, it is finding a role in the consumer market for binoculars, in the commercial market for surveillance, in the scientific market for detection of very low intensity optical signals.
• For all these applications, the ability to retain chromatic information would be of significant interest, more so in some applications than others.
• Indeed, the ability to see color from image intensifiers may create a greater demand for image intensifiers. As has been noted, this capability can be of significant value for space missions such as earth observation.

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