New strategic partnerships will expand the ecosystem around imec’s hyperspectral image sensor technology to enable its successful commercialization into machine vision, medical imaging, remote sensing and global security markets.
Nanoelectronics research center, imec, showcases at this week’s 2014 SPIE Photonics West conference and exhibition its ultra-compact hyperspectral imaging sensor technology integrated into different commercial camera vendor partners including ADIMEC (The Netherlands), 3D-One (The Netherlands), Tattile (Italy), and SPIE 2014 PRISM awarded finalist BaySpec (USA).
“We are excited to announce the successful integration of our first generation hyperspectral image sensor prototypes by several camera vendor companies. These strategic partnerships on different applications highlight the broad potential of this unique optical-filter-on-chip sensor solution;” said Rudi Cartuyvels, senior vice president of smart systems at imec. Our technology expertise will enable our partners to add new range of products to their offering, effectively opening up new markets in the booming field of imaging spectroscopy”.
“Based on imec’s hyperspectral sensor technology, we developed the OCI-1000, an exciting handheld spectral imaging ‘point-and-shoot’ device that enabled our company to be finalist at the SPIE PRISM award this year” commented William Yang, President and CEO at spectroscopy company BaySpec.
Hyperspectral imaging is not new in the world of high-end remote sensing instruments such as satellites and airborne systems. By applying narrow-band spectral filters at pixel level using semiconductor thin-film processing, imec’s technology enables hyperspectral image sensor solutions with extreme compactness, low weight, high reliability and proven capabilities to be mass produced at low cost in volume. Such sensor solution is extremely valuable for camera vendors to access new markets such as drone UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) for precision agriculture, food quality grading in machine vision or in-vivo imaging for classification of medical tissues, among others.
The different hyperspectral imaging camera prototypes will be showcased at imec’s booth at Photonics West. For a demonstration, please visit imec on booth #4529 at SPIE Photonics West exhibition.