Recent Technique of Low Light Level Television

Abstract

This paper describes the low light level imaging technique using electronics and television engineering. The primarily motive forces for the development of low light level imaging systems were military requirements for night operations. But during the last few years many low light level TVs and other imaging systems applied for science, industrial and broadcasting have been developed.
It goes without saying that most important device in the low light level TV system is pickup device. Pickup devices are equivalent materials as sensitive plate or film for the photography. Various types of image intensifiers were developed for direct-view applications. Principles of these imaging devices were applied to the problem of low light level TV by coupling to existing TV cameras.
The high utility of these new low light level imaging instruments results from the development of imaging devices with a quantum efficiency better than that of film or the human eye. However, even instruments with high quantum efficiency, the sensitivity (resolution and signal-to-noise ratio) is limited by the number of available photons at photosensitive surface. The property of several of these imaging devices, such as resolving capability and signal-to-noise ratio, as a function of the input luminous flux have been compared.