Again another year (almost) has passed by. And then it is a good moment to take a look back of what happened in 2018. And yes, again a busy year and again a very interesting year if one looks to technical innovations and achievements !
2018 was the first full year in which every month the Harvest Imaging Newsletter was issued. I got a lot of positive reactions about it, although the Newsletter is very simple and short. Maybe these are the key success factors for such a monthly information letter. Many people asked to be added to the mailing list, indicating that this source of information is appreciated.
In 2018 also the project about reproducibility, variability and reliability of CMOS imagers was continued. Actually that should not be any news, because the promise was made at the beginning of the project that this project would last for 5 years. In the meantime about 2500 cameras are being characterized (not all different ones !) and some of the obtained results are pretty surprising, especially if one comes with a strong background in CCD technology. In general CMOS image sensors are much, much more robust than CCDs ever were. And actually here you could see the incredible advantage of using a kind of standard process (being CMOS) instead of a dedicated process (being CCD). And I do know that a modern CIS process is no longer the same as a standard CMOS process, but the non-imaging parts of a CIS process are still more or less a copy of a standard CMOS process. As an example, gate protection circuitry on a CMOS image sensor is thousand times better and more robust than a CCD gate protection circuit. And these type of characteristics immediately translate in a more robust overall product.
On a more scientific level, 2018 was a year without an International Image Sensor Workshop, but in 2018 there was an outstanding imaging session at the IEDM. Very interesting stuff was presented and that actually raises the expectations for great papers at the next Workshop to be held in June 2019 in Snowbird (UT). This is actually the same location as we were 6 years ago in 2013.
The core business of Harvest Imaging remains the technical training and technical courses conducted in the field of digital imaging. Also in the 2018 several open courses as well as in-house courses were organized. On top of that, CEI started also with on-line courses in 2018. CEI recorded 3 of my courses and made them available on-line. All 3 courses have to do with characterization of noise in an image sensor. A bit along the same line : in January 2018, IEEE-SSCS broadcasted a webinar, this was a recording of one of my presentations on noise as well. According to IEEE this was an overwhelming success they had never seen before. Almost 1000 people registered up-front to attend the webinar. Quite funny : while you sit in your office behind your PC to answer questions, about 1000 people from really all over the world are listening to the webinar.
Finally something about the yearly Harvest Imaging Forum 2018 : for the very first time, the forum had 2 speakers, one for every day. Prof. Marian Verhelst talked about deep neural networks for imaging applications, and prof. Wilfried Philips spent one day on image fusion. Both presentation were very well received, and for sure also in 2019 a new Harvest Imaging Forum will be organized. First contacts with possible speakers were already made, but it is not that easy to find people that can “entertain” a group of imaging professionals during two days. Candidate speakers are welcome to contact me !
Unfortunately 2018 was not only good news. The digital imaging world lost one of their members due to an accident. Arnaud Darmont passed away while he was on a business trip in the USA. Arnaud was the CEO/founder of Aphesa, a small consulting company also located in Belgium. Recently Arnaud concentrated mainly on standardization topics, he also was the chair of the EMVA1288 standard. Arnaud was only known as the conference chair of the Electronic Imaging Conference on Image Sensors.
So now that 2018 is almost completed, the question is : “What will 2019 bring ?”. The technical courses and trainings will continue, that is for sure. Several courses are already booked, and I do see a trend of moving from open courses (to which everyone can register) to in-house courses (with a dedicated agenda and tailored to the needs of the customer). Characterization of the CMOS cameras will continue, with special focus on UV-radiation. What will UV-radiation do on the characteristics of a CMOS imager ? First tests have started, but there is still quite some work to do before a decent answer can be given to this reliability test. In other words : Harvest Imaging is ready to embrace 2019 in the same way as it did with the previous years.
Wishing all my readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. “See” you soon.
Albert, 21-12-2018.