Advantages of computer cameras over video cameras frame grabbers for high speed vision applications

Cameras designed to work specifically with computers can have certain advantages in comparison to the use of cameras loosely defined as ''video'' cameras. In recent years the camera type distinctions have become somewhat blurred, with a great presence of ''digital cameras'' aimed more at the home markets. This latter category is not considered here. The term ''computer camera'' herein is intended to mean one which has low level computer (and software) control of the CCD clocking. These can often be used to satisfy some of the more demanding machine vision tasks, and in some cases with a higher rate of measurements than video cameras. Several of these specific applications will be described here, including some which use recently designed CCD's which offer good combinations of parameters such as noise, speed, and resolution. Among the considerations for the choice of camera type in any given application would be such effects as ''pixel jitter'', and ''anti-aliasing''. Some of these effects may only be relevant if there is a mismatch between the number of pixels per line in the camera CCD and the number of analog to digital (A/D) sampling points along a video scan line. For the computer camera case these numbers are guaranteed to match, which alleviates some measurement inaccuracies and leads to higher effective resolution.