Münster, Germany. XIMEA announced it is offering the new Model MQ022HG-IM-LS150-VISNIR, a member of its hyperspectral xiSpec Series camera. The company says its extremely small, robust, and easy-to-use industrial cameras are the smallest hyperspectral imaging (HSI) cameras available today.

Conventional color cameras use a mosaic pattern of red, green, and blue (RGB) color filters on top of the pixel matrix. Hyperspectral cameras replace the RGB pattern by many different wavelength filters. While the numerous color filters increase the complexity of the de-mosaicing and reduce the spatial resolution, HSI cameras deliver spectra for individual narrow color bands, revealing a different set of information that can also indicate chemical or composition differences of objects of same or similar color imaged by RGB cameras.

Instead of using a mosaic pattern of hyperspectral filters, this camera features a line-wise arrangement of 150 HSI bands. Thanks to the high frame rate of the image sensor, this camera enables detailed and crisp captures of moving objects at multiple wavelengths. Thereby the objects can be moved orthogonally to the horizontal color filters of a mounted camera (for example, on a conveyor belt), or the camera can be attached (for example, to a UAV, which flies over a large area). The visual and near-infrared (NIR) spectrum of this camera is especially relevant in agriculture.

The features of this new xiSpec multi-linescan HSI camera include 150 HSI bands between 470 and 900 nm, covering the visual and NIR spectrum, and high-speed multi-linescan capability at with up to 1020 lines/s. The cameras are USB3 Vision compliant and include Windows, Linux, and MacOS drivers; an SDK; and USB 3.0 micro-B connector with screw-lock. They are highly compact (26.4 x 26.4 x 31 mm), lightweight (32 g), and power saving (1.6 W) and are also available without housing as single-PCB board-level version for even tighter integration.

XIMEA’s xiSpec camera is based on the design and technology of the globally field-proven xiQ series of industrial USB 3.0 cameras.

The company is highlighting the cameras at The Vision Show this week.

https://www.ximea.com/en/usb3-vision-camera/hyperspectral-usb3-cameras-mini