What exactly is the concept of the digital imaging commonly mentioned?
What is digital imaging?
Digital imaging is a general term used to describe the electronic recording of images. Almost any image can be captured in digital format, from sunset landscapes to microscope samples to scanned documents.
What is a digital image?
A digital image is composed of a series of pixels or picture elements. By reading image files and displaying the pixels, images can be displayed on a monitor.
What are the advantages of digital imaging?
The four main advantages of digital imaging for microscopy are:
- Permanent Recording: You can make infinite copies of the same digital image without compromising the image quality. So digital imaging can help you preserve research slides and avoid sample degradation issues.
- Image Sharing: Digital images can be electronically sent to colleagues far away, saving you the cost of transporting collaborative project slides.
- Image Adjustments: With imaging software like cellSens, a program for microscope image acquisition and processing, you can easily manipulate the raw digital image with just a few clicks, solving issues such as poor contrast and excessive noise.
- Quantitative Analysis: Digital imaging can provide data for quantitative image analysis, helping you obtain new information. For example, you can compare the data with previous imaging results in a database.
A digital microscope, also known as a video microscope, converts the physical image seen through the microscope into an image displayed on the microscope's built-in screen or computer through analog-to-digital conversion.
Digital video:
Digital video involves using video capture devices such as cameras to convert color and brightness information from external images into electrical signals, which are then recorded on storage media.
Camera:
The camera is a key component in machine vision systems, with its fundamental function being to convert light signals into ordered electrical signals. Selecting the appropriate camera is also an important aspect of machine vision system design, as it directly affects image resolution, image quality, and overall system operation mode.
Resolution:
Resolution refers to the number of pixels captured by the camera in each image acquisition. For digital cameras, this is generally directly related to the number of pixels in the photosensitive sensor.
Pixel Size:
Pixel size, along with resolution, determines the size of the camera's photosensitive area. Currently, the pixel size of digital cameras is generally between 3μm and 10μm.
Spectral Response Characteristics:
This refers to the photosensitive sensor's sensitivity to different wavelengths of light. The typical response range is 350nm to 1000nm. Some cameras have an infrared filter in front of the imaging surface, which can be removed if the system requires infrared sensitivity.
Imaging Area:
This refers to the size of the camera's photosensitive chip, including options such as 1 inch, 2/3 inch, 1/2 inch, 1/3 inch, and 1/4 inch. The smaller the inch size, the smaller the field of view captured by the camera.