From Photon To Pixel

This second edition of the fully revised and updated From Photon to Pixel presents essential elements in modern digital photographic devices. Our universal infatuation with photography profoundly affects its usage and development. While some sides of photographic “culture” remain wholly unchanged – art photography, journalistic and advertising photography, scientific photography, etc. – new facets emerge: leisure or travel photography, everyday life photography, anecdotal, observational or unusual photography, and microcosm, or micro-community, photography with its culmination in the narcissistic selfie. These new forms combine an often simplified manner of photographing and modern means of instantaneous, remote and mass communication. This book does not extend into the sociological study of photography, instead it explains how the digital camera works by examining in detail each of the components that constitutes it to provide the reader with a preliminary guide into the inner workings of this device.

This second edition of the fully revised and updated From Photon to Pixel presents essential elements in modern digital photographic devices. Our universal infatuation with photography profoundly affects its usage and development. While some sides of photographic “culture” remain wholly unchanged – art photography, journalistic and advertising photography, scientific photography, etc. – new facets emerge: leisure or travel photography, everyday life photography, anecdotal, observational or unusual photography, and microcosm, or micro-community, photography with its culmination in the narcissistic selfie. These new forms combine an often simplified manner of photographing and modern means of instantaneous, remote and mass communication. This book does not extend into the sociological study of photography, instead it explains how the digital camera works by examining in detail each of the components that constitutes it to provide the reader with a preliminary guide into the inner workings of this device.

What is light? -- Photons and life -- Color vision -- How photons know where to go -- Optical phenomena and life -- Direct image formation -- Imaging as inference -- Imaging by X-ray diffraction -- Vision in dim light -- The mechanism of visual transduction -- The first synapse and beyond -- Electrons, photons, and the Feynman principle -- Field quantization, polarization, and the orientation of a single molecule -- Quantum-mechanical theory of FRET

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Photon-Counting Image Sensors" that was published in Sensors

In 1984 Desmond O’Connor and David Phillips published their comprehensive book „Time-correlated Single Photon Counting“. At that time time-correlated s- gle photon counting, or TCSPC, was used primarily to record fluorescence decay functions of dye solutions in cuvettes. From the beginning, TCSPC was an am- ingly sensitive and accurate technique with excellent time-resolution. However, acquisition times were relatively slow due to the low repetition rate of the light sources and the limited speed of the electronics of the 70s and early 80s. Moreover, TCSPC was intrinsically one-dimensional, i.e. limited to the recording of the wa- form of a periodic light signal. Even with these limitations, it was a wonderful te- nique. More than 20 years have elapsed, and electronics and laser techniques have made impressive progress. The number of transistors on a single chip has approximately doubled every 18 months, resulting in a more than 1,000-fold increase in compl- ity and speed. The repetition rate and power of pulsed light sources have increased by about the same factor.

Contains more than 230 figures that present experimental CCD and CMOS data products and modeling simulations connected to photon transfer. This title also provides hundreds of relations that support photon transfer theory, simulations, and data.

The acquisition and interpretation of images is a central capability in almost all scientific and technological domains. In particular, the acquisition of electromagnetic radiation, in the form of visible light, UV, infrared, X-ray, etc. is of enormous practical importance. The ultimate sensitivity in electronic imaging is the detection of individual photons. With this book, the first comprehensive review of all aspects of single-photon electronic imaging has been created. Topics include theoretical basics, semiconductor fabrication, single-photon detection principles, imager design and applications of different spectral domains. Today, the solid-state fabrication capabilities for several types of image sensors has advanced to a point, where uncoooled single-photon electronic imaging will soon become a consumer product. This book is giving a specialist ́s view from different domains to the forthcoming “single-photon imaging” revolution. The various aspects of single-photon imaging are treated by internationally renowned, leading scientists and technologists who have all pioneered their respective fields.

Once the second edition was safely off to the printer, the 110 larger world of micro-CT and micro-MRI and the smaller world authors breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed, secure in the belief revealed by the scanning and transmission electron microscopes. that they would “never have to do that again. ” That lasted for 10 To round out the story we even have a chapter on what PowerPoint years. When we ?nally awoke, it seemed that a lot had happened. does to the results, and the annotated bibliography has been In particular, people were trying to use the Handbook as a text- updated and extended. book even though it lacked the practical chapters needed. There As with the previous editions, the editor enjoyed a tremendous had been tremendous progress in lasers and ?ber-optics and in our amount of good will and cooperation from the 124 authors understanding of the mechanisms underlying photobleaching and involved. Both I, and the light microscopy community in general, phototoxicity. It was time for a new book. I contacted “the usual owe them all a great debt of gratitude. On a more personal note, I suspects” and almost all agreed as long as the deadline was still a would like to thank Kathy Lyons and her associates at Springer for year away.