Canon’s new 120MXS 120 Megapixel CMOS sensor for industrial machine vision takes imaging resolution to new frontiers. Featuring a number of proprietary innovations, this sensor is currently the highest resolution CMOS sensor of this size and type on the market.
From biomedical to surveillance imaging, a wide range of demanding applications stand to benefit from the unparalleled resolution of the Canon 120MXS 120 Megapixel CMOS sensor.
But how powerful is this sensor? And what technical features enable such high performance?
120MXS 120 Megapixel CMOS Sensor Technical Features
The 120 megapixel CMOS sensor from Canon features 13280 x 9184 effective pixels – approximately 60 times the resolution of Full HD. This ultra-high resolutions sensor square pixel arrangement of 2.2µm x 2.2µm, creating 122 million effective pixels in total. The 120MXS sensor incorporates nearly as many pixels as there are receptors in the human eye, achieving a resolution similar to what the human eye sees.
This sensor is an area scan sensor with a rolling shutter, available in color or in monochrome with twice the sensitivity. It’s powerful enough to achieve unprecedented resolutions and versatile enough to work in a number of different OEM integrations.
Technical Innovations Behind the 120MXS 120 Megapixel CMOS Sensor
There are several proprietary innovations, mainly at the pixel level, that make this CMOS sensor so powerful. One of the main changes includes improvements to data transmission speeds. With each pixel producing 18 gigabits of data each second on such a large chip, transferring data at high speeds is a challenge. Canon developed a way to leverage seven parallel readout blocks, each with four channels, leading to 28 channels overall. This is significantly more than the 4 readout channels found on most HD sensors, allowing for far greater data transmission speeds.
Canon also developed a new method of eliminating crosstalk between pixels – which is when light leaks from pixel to pixel and ruins image quality – by using a new fabrication process and a unique wire structure that surrounds the pixel.
While there are several other innovative features of the 120MXS sensor, such as a simplified design, the elimination of crosstalk and the increase in data transmission speeds are most important for enabling a CMOS sensor with such high resolutions.
The 120MXS 120 Megapixel CMOS sensor from Canon is at the top of its class. With unparalleled resolution, this sensor tackles the most demanding imaging applications.
For a more detailed look at this sensor, read more technical product information on the 120MXS 120 Megapixel CMOS Sensor from Canon.