A novel CMOS-compatible, monolithically integrated line-scan hyperspectral imager covering the VIS-NIR range

Imec has developed a process for the monolithic integration of optical filters on top of CMOS image sensors, leading to compact, cost-efficient and faster hyperspectral cameras. Different prototype sensors are available, most notably a 600- 1000 nm line-scan imager, and two mosaic sensors: a 4x4 VIS (470-620 nm range) and a 5x5 VNIR (600-1000 nm). In response to the users’ demand for a single sensor able to cover both the VIS and NIR ranges, further developments have been made to enable more demanding applications. As a result, this paper presents the latest addition to imec’s family of monolithically-integrated hyperspectral sensors: a line scan sensor covering the range 470-900 nm. This new prototype sensor can acquire hyperspectral image cubes of 2048 pixels over 192 bands (128 bands for the 600- 900 nm range, and 64 bands for the 470-620 nm range) at 340 cubes per second for normal machine vision illumination levels.