Zyla 5.5 - sCMOS Camera by Andor Technology

Zyla sCMOS Camera – Fast, sensitive, compact and light

Andor’s new Zyla sCMOS Camera offers high speed, high sensitivity imaging performance in a remarkably light and compact, TE cooled design.

Zyla is ideally suited to many cutting edge applications that push the boundaries of speed, offering sustained frame rate performance of up to 100 fps (faster with ROI).A highly cost-effective 30 fps version is also available, offering 1.2 e- rms read noise, representing an ideal low light ‘workhorse’ camera solution for both microscopy and physical science applications, in either research or OEM environments.

Rolling and Global (Snapshot) Shutter readout ensure maximum application flexibility. Global shutter in particular provides an important ‘freeze frame’ exposure mechanism that emulates that of an interline CCD, overcoming the transient readout nature of rolling shutter mode.

Performance and Innovations of the Zyla sCMOS camera

Andor's New Zyla sCMOS camera boasts an impressive set of developments that lend itself to a wide spectrum of research and OEM applications:
 

• Compact and Light - At only 1kg weight and ~ 900 cm3 volume envelope, Zyla is ideal for integration into weight or space restricted set-ups. Ideal for OEM.
• Fast Frame Rates - The parallel readout nature of the Zyla sCMOS means it is capable of reaching very rapid frame rates, much faster than interline CCDs. 100 fps (full frame) is achievable sustained, much faster with ROI. Distinctively, this is accomplished without significantly sacrificing read noise performance, further distinguishing the technology from CCDs.
• Low Noise Floor - Zyla achieves 1.2 electrons rms typical read noise @ 30 fps (full 5.5 megapixel), 1.45 e- at the full 100 fps.
• Rolling and Global (Snapshot) Shutter - Zyla offers the distinct capability to offer both Rolling and Global Shutter exposure modes within the same camera, such that the most appropriate mode can be selected dependent on application requirements. Snapshot exposure is analogous to an interline CCD exposure, used for freeze frame capture of fast moving/changing events.
• Extended Dynamic Range - Zyla is designed to make use of the innovative Dual Column-Level Amplifier design of the sensor, meaning that the full well depth can be harnessed alongside the lowest noise floor. Uniquely for such a relatively small pixel design, this allows for dynamic range performance exceeding 25,000:1.
• TE cooled to 0 °C - Zyla stabilizes the sensor at 0 °C, reducing darkcurrent to 0.2 e-/pix/sec. Importantly, this temperature holds in ambient temperatures up to +35 °C, ideal for OEM integration into enclosed systems.
• Dynamic Baseline Clamp - All that should vary is your signal! Real time algorithm that uses dark reference pixels on each row to stabalize the baseline (bias) offset. Necessary to ensure quantitative accuracy across each image and between successive images and to significantly improve background image uniformity.
• Spurious Noise Filter - Real time optional FPGA filter that identifies and compensates for ‘spurious’ high noise pixels that are greater than 5 electrons (< 1% of all pixels).
• Hardware Timestamp – FPGA generated timestamp with 25ns accuracy. The hardware timestamp is essential to maintain accurate kinetic information relating to image capture, especially when using on-head memory to access accelerated kinetic series capability.
• Data Flow Monitor - Designed to provide a simple visual tool that enables you to instantly ascertain if your acquisition parameters will result in a rate of data transfer that is too fast for either interface or hard drive. Also determines if the kinetic series size is within the capacity of hard drive space or PC RAM.
• iCam – iCam technology ensures minimal timing overheads associated with exposure switching. Zyla will perform efficiently within multi-channel microscopy acquisition protocols, where exposure times are repeatedly changed in order to sample specimens loaded with multiple fluorophores of varying quantum yields.