News

New Release 4.0 in Effect

The new release 4.0 of the EMVA 1288 Standard for objective characterization of industrial cameras, which is successfully used worldwide, has become effective in June 2021. The release takes into account the rapid development of camera and image sensor technology. The documents of the standard are published here. The EMVA 1288 standard, hosted by EMVA, is part of the global G3 standardization initiative in which the five leading machine vision organizations A3, CMVU, EMVA, JIIA, and VDMA cooperate.

Until the previous Release 3.1 dated back December 2016, the application of the EMVA 1288 standard with a simple linear model was limited to cameras with a linear response and without any pre-processing. While this model is being continued with some improvements in the ’Release 4.0 Linear’, a new module ‘Release 4.0 General’ has been added in the latest release. With it, the characterization of a non-linear camera or a camera with unknown pre-processing is possible even without any model due to the universal system-theoretical approach of the EMVA 1288 standard. Just as with the linear camera model, all application-related quality parameters can be measured in this way. With both modules “Linear” and “General” the same measurements are performed. Depending on the camera characteristics, the proper evaluation either according to the linear or general model is applied.

In addition, Release 4.0 includes numerous expansions to characterize the latest generation of image sensors and cameras according to the application. The most important of these are:

  • Extended wavelength range from UV to SWIR range.
  • Raw data of any given image acquisition modality can now be characterized according to the standard.
  • The versatile and universal analysis tools of the EMVA 1288 standard can also be applied to quantities calculated and derived from multiple channels. For polarization image sensors, these are, for example, the degree of polarization and the polarization angle.
  • Inhomogeneities are measured in detail and now decomposed into column, row, and pixel variations. They can now be determined with a new method at all intensity levels from just two captured images.
  • Optionally, cameras with optics or with illumination as given by the position of the exit pupil of the optics for which the image sensor was designed can be measured according to the standard. Thus, the standard is now also suitable for image sensors with pixels shifted towards the edge.
  • A more suitable measure for the linearity of the characteristic curve is introduced.

Educational initative II: Record of EMVA 1288 webinar available
The record of the the first educational webinar of the EMVA about
How to compare cameras with the new EMVA 1288 standard, Release 3.1‘ is now available online at EMVA Tube

If you have feedback, please feel free to contact the EMVA1288 chair at jaehne@emva.org.


Educational initative I: The following videos explain highlights of the new release 3.1 of the EMVA 1288 standard for objective camera characterization:

Part 1 (published August 1, 2017): Basics of EMVA 1288

Part 2 (published August 8, 2017): New Summary Data Sheet

New as of December 30, 2016: Release 3.1 with the new data template sheet is operative, download the new documents here