Abstract
Advances in Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) Active Pixel Sensor (APS) technology has many potentials for application in optical imaging techniques. CMOS APS offers high speed read out and on-chip signal processing not available from the predecessor technology, charge couple device (CCD). Performance of a commercial ON Semiconductor's CMOS, MT9J003 was characterised for application in 3D optical imaging system. This work focuses on the electro-optical performance of the sensor. Two techniques were used, the mean-variance and the photon transfer to determine the sensor conversion gain, the noise and the dynamic range of the sensor. Images at different LED illumination levels were captured by the sensor to obtain the relationship between the mean signal and the noise from the images using in-house computer programme developed with LabVIEW (National Instruments, Austin, TX). Photon transfer technique allows separation of the shot noise in the sensor from the other types of noises that are inseparable using mean-variance. Mean-variance underestimates the conversion gain of the CMOS. Results indicate that the photon transfer provides a more accurate estimation of the electro-optical performance of a CMOS APS.