Introduction to High Speed Imaging
and Streak Cameras

Kentech manufacture several devices for the investigation of both x-rays and optical photons with both spatial and time resolution. These are:-
  • GOI Gated Optical Imager (and related products)
  • HRI High Rate Imager
  • SLIX Stripline Imager for x-rays
  • XRSC X-ray Streak Camera.

  • The GOI and the SLIX systems are full imaging devices that can take short exposure pictures of optical or soft x-ray sources, respectively. They use different techniques to obtain the short exposure but have in common the fact that the photons from the source are converted into electrons at a photocathode with little loss of spatial or temporal information. The electrons are then manipulated electronically before being converted into optical photons in a phosphor. The image on the phosphor retains the spatial information but only a small time slice of the temporal history of the source is selected. In this way a short exposure of the source is obtained. To acquire full temporal information many such exposures must be taken.

    In the X-ray streak camera, one spatial dimension is discarded and this dimension in the image is used to record the temporal history of the source. One acquires an image that has intensity information as a function of time and one spatial dimension in the source, ie. only a slice of the source is used. The streak camera is also an image convertor camera in that the soft x-ray photons are converted to electrons, manipulated and then converted back to photons for recording.

    Kentech also manufactures pulse generators and power supplies for other slower applications using both these systems and also for Generation 3 image intensifiers.