ECE 730 Topic 22 - Spring 2014

ECE 730 Topic 22 - Digital Imaging Circuits and Technology

Instructor

Professor K. Karim

Calendar description

This course covers the design and fabrication of digital imaging circuits and devices used in imaging applications. The course provides an understanding of the scientific principles, physics and engineering technology that provide the basis by which images are acquired in digital imaging. The integrated solid-state image sensor technology to be discussed in the course appears in a wide variety of applications ranging from CMOS digital cameras used in smartphones to large area active matrix flat panel X- ray imagers. Past undergraduate and graduate students who have attended this course have gone onto to careers developing digital cameras and associated electronics at companies including Apple, Blackberry, Aptina, Micron, Omnivision, Illumina, Perkin Elmer, Qualcomm and Intel.

Prerequisite

ECE 331, ECE 242 or equivalent

Detailed description

  1. Device technology (14 lecture hours)
    • Imaging devices (CCDs, photodiodes, phototransistors, charge injection devices, charge modulation devices, MSM devices)
  2. Imaging pixel and array design (14 lecture hours)
    • Active pixel sensors (APS) and passive pixel circuits, current mode, voltage mode, logarithmic, on-pixel A/D, integrating and non-integrating sensors, photon counting pixels
    • Imaging array operation and performance figures of merit, resolution, speed, quantum efficiency, random electronic noise sources, fixed pattern noise, photoresponse non-uniformity
  3. Radiographic imaging materials and methods (8 lecture hours)
    • X-rays, production, interaction with matter
    • Characteristics of image receptors, fluorescent intensifying screens, screen categories, light diffusion, cassettes
    • Digital X-ray and optical sensing (scintillators, indirect detection, direct X-ray detection)

Total lecture hours: 36

References

  1. CMOS/CCD Sensors and Camera Systems, Gerald C. Holst, Terrence S. Lomheim, JCD Publishing/SPIE, 2007.
  2. Handbook of Medical Imaging, Volume 1: Physics and Psychophysics (SPIE PRESS Monograph Vol. PM79), Jacob Beutel, Harold L. Kundel, Richard L. Van Metter, Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers, February 2000.
  3. Lecture Notes