Image-Revolutionaries.Pdf

SOCIETY (L–R) Michael Tompsett, Eric Fossum, Nobukazu Teranishi and George Smith (not pictured) received the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering for three innovations that have radically changed the visual world © Jason Alden IMAGE REVOLUTIONARIES In February 2017, the four engineers responsible for the creation of digital imaging sensors were awarded the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. Science writer and broadcaster Geoff Watts spoke to them about the development of the technology and how their contributions have revolutionised the way that visual information is captured and analysed. INGENIA ISSUE 73 DECEMBER 2017 23 IMAGE REVOLUTIONARIES SOCIETY The market for image-sensing technology is worth some $10 billion EXPLORING THE UNIVERSE annually and could be half as large again by 2020 Euclid is a European Space Agency mission due to be launched in 2020. Its ambitious aim is to investigate the dark energy that accounts for three In selecting the winners of the (PPD); and Eric Fossum, who Clarke CBE. He was teasing us, electronically on the surface of a quarters of the energy/matter 2017 Queen Elizabeth Prize developed the complementary but in this context, his wit has CCD, could be used to store and content of the universe, and for Engineering (QEPrize), metal-oxide semiconductor a double relevance. While most transfer information of the kind may explain why the rate the judges have managed to (CMOS) sensor. These users of traditional film cameras required by computer memories. © European Space Agency expansion of the universe is to more basic physics and, when ‘p’ side contains an excess of encompass four key stages in interlocking developments had at least a dim idea of how In fact, the CCD was soon to find accelerating. he joined the NEC Corporation holes. Teranishi added a p layer the history of solid-state image have had an impact to match their instruments captured light, its major use in a quite different Crucial to the success of the mission are Euclid’s reliable, in 1978, to image sensing. with a high level of impurities sensing that are embodied in the extent of their begetters’ this is much less true of the sphere, but the importance of lightweight, high-performance image sensors for observing the Photodiodes of that period were on top of the n layer of a normal four exceptional individuals. ingenuity. Image sensing has billions who reap the benefits Boyle and Smith’s invention was visible and near-infrared output of the billions of faint galaxies plagued by deficiencies such as photodiode. This modification They are George Smith, who proved to be a technology as of digital imaging every day; self-evident, and celebrated in towards which they will be directed. The focal plane of the visible noise and image lag, so Teranishi had the effect of eliminating invented the charge-coupled socially influential as it is fast and the images themselves, 2009 when the pair received the light instrument will comprise an array of 36 CCDs (as seen above) set out to unravel the roots of image lag, reducing dark current device (CCD); Michael Tompsett, moving. whether a picture of some far Nobel Prize for Physics. designed for the exceptional circumstances in which they will be these problems and looked for (the current generated even who exploited its potential “Any sufficiently advanced distant galaxy or the interior of The real value of the CCD operating. They are highly efficient, should be able to tolerate the a means of dealing with them. in the absence of light) and in image sensing; Nobukazu technology is indistinguishable the human gut, often have an began to emerge with its change radiation to which they will be exposed, and by generating 25 times Two years after joining NEC, he producing a much better image Teranishi, who came up with from magic,” wrote science- emotional resonance that surely of role from memory storage as many pixel images as a top digital camera, should offer a far better invented the PPD. quality. It allowed pixel sizes to the modern pinned photodiode fiction novelist Sir Arthur C merits the term ‘magical’? to image sensing, which is quality image. Nothing less would allow astrophysicists to probe the Conventional photodiodes be reduced and their numbers attributable to the second of the history and nature of the universe. comprise a p–n (positive– increased, with a consequent THE CAMERA IN A PILL 2017 QEPrize winners, Michael negative) junction at the boost to resolution. Mass One of the great virtues of the new sensor technology lies THE FIRST Tompsett. Born in the UK, he much smaller than those in use array to one corner of the chip. boundary between two types production started in 1987, and in miniaturisation: in this instance, a camera small enough to DIGITAL PHOTOS studied physics at the University at the time. Here, Tompsett added to the of the same semiconductor a few years later, CMOS image swallow. Capsule endoscopy, as it is called, relies on a camera, an The story behind image-sensing of Cambridge and followed it up Image capturing by CCDs is original CCD design with an crystal. The ‘n’ side contains an sensors could also benefit from LED and a transmitter built into a pill of the size commonly used technology begins with George with a PhD in engineering. By the a product of their response to analogue-to-digital converter excess of electrons, while the the use of PPDs. to deliver drugs or vitamins. As it moves through the stomach Smith. In 1959, after graduating time he came to work on CCDs, light; when photons impinge to turn the amount of charge and the rest of the gut, its camera records images that can be from the University of Chicago he had already demonstrated his on the light-sensitive surface generated within each pixel into transmitted to a recording device worn by the patient. with a PhD in physics, he joined inventiveness. While employed of an array of pixels on a silicon a digital value to be memorised. Conventional endoscopy relies on a long, flexible viewing a department of Bell Telephone by the then English Electric chip, they trigger the formation The digital readout so compiled tube inserted through the mouth and as far down the digestive Laboratories headed by Valve Company, he devised of electrons. These are captured forms a numerical description tract as it will reach. Capsule endoscopy avoids the inevitable Canadian physicist Willard Boyle the uncooled thermal-imaging by the electrostatic forces in of the image. “I led the group discomfort of this procedure, and dispenses with the need for (deceased). In line with the topic television camera tube. However, the pixel and accumulate. The that developed CCD images, and trained staff to perform the examination. of his PhD thesis, he continued by then the focus of his interests brighter the light, the greater the made the first colour camera,” A capsule camera may be tethered on a fine control wire to study semimetals such as had already begun to change. number of electrons generated Tompsett says. “And I took the and retrieved by pulling it back up after examination has been arsenic, antimony and bismuth. “Ideas were being floated within any one pixel site. In an first colour pictures,” he adds. completed. However, as manufacturing costs fall, it can also be He subsequently moved to about solid-state imagers,” he image brought to focus on the “The first person to have a digital disposable and allowed to another department at Bell titled recalls, “and that was something surface of a CCD, the location image taken of her was my wife.” pass out of the body. Device Concepts. In 1969, it was I wanted to work on.” In 1969, and number of electrons form This is still a novel here that he and Boyle invented his fascination took him to the an analogue representation of technology, and the extent the CCD. best place to be for anyone with that image. IMPROVED QUALITY of its benefits in searching Boyle and Smith’s intention such an interest: Bell Telephone Besides acting as a AND SMALLER for cancers or other was to exploit the capacity Laboratories. He quickly realised photodetector, the pixel Tompsett had followed his abnormalities of the digestive of semiconducting materials how Boyle and Smith’s CCDs structure of a CCD also serves father into engineering, and tract is still being assessed, to transfer charge along their could be exploited for their as a readout system. Charge Nobukazu Teranishi also had a generated in the pixels is father who worked in the field. but findings so far are surface from one storage site capacity to capture images, and Michael Tompsett holds a colour camera that he helped to develop while © GivenImaging encouraging. to the next. They reasoned that embarked on a quest to develop transported, step-by-step, from It was nuclear fusion that first his wife Margaret holds a photo of herself, which was the first colour patterns of charge, created imaging systems that were one site to the next, across the attracted him, but that gave way image using three solid-state imagers © Jason Alden 24 INGENIA INGENIA ISSUE 73 DECEMBER 2017 25 IMAGE REVOLUTIONARIES SOCIETY HANDS-FREE IMAGING TECHNOLOGY RAISING ENGINEERING’S PROFILE In 2010, Microsoft released its motion-sensing device, Kinect. Kinect was an instant hit, selling more than eight million units in its first two months on sale and becoming the then fastest-selling consumer Teranishi moved to the GLOBAL IMPACT sensitivity. The ubiquity of electronics device in history. Panasonic Corporation in 2000, Returning to the present, sensing devices will become Combining depth sensing and subsequently to his present upwards of 50 CMOS cameras even greater as we surround and digital image sensors with academic posts at the University are now being manufactured ourselves with all sorts of machine learning, the gadget of Hyogo and at Shizuoka every second.

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