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©2016 QImaging. All rights reserved. QI_Retiga R Series Camera_UM_Rev_A5
9
RETIGA R
™
SERIES USER MANUAL
CHAPTER 3
USING YOUR QI Retiga R Series Camera
Imaging Software
The QI Retiga R Series cameras comes with a full featured camera control application, Ocular
™
. For an up-to-
date list of other compatible third-party imaging software applications, please visit:
http://www.qimaging.com/resources/pdfs/Software-Compatibility-Matrix.pdf
The QI Retiga R Series camera’s image capture capabilities are controlled entirely through your imaging
software. Basic functionalities include control over exposure time, gain state, clearing mode, region of interest
(ROI), and pixel binning. Additional information on camera use and CCD operating is available on the web,
please visit:
http://www.qimaging.com/support/knowledgebase/
Basic Camera Parameters
Exposure Time
The QI Retiga R Series camera’s exposure controls allow you to adjust the integration time for each acquisition.
By increasing the exposure time, more light is captured by the sensor and a better signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is
achieved. The exposure time should be adjusted to a level that achieves the shortest integration time possible
while still maintaining sufficient SNR.
For color R-Series cameras, there is an autoexposure feature in Ocular that will compute the optimal exposure
time with a single click.
Gain State
Gain (with regards to cameras) is defined as the conversion factor of captured electrons to a digital signal,
often referred to as a grey value or ADU (Analogue to Digital Unit) and has units of electrons per ADU (e/ADU).
Knowing the gain of a camera allows users to directly compare an ADU value as measured from their software
to the physical number of electrons actually captured by the camera’s sensor. Gain plays a critical role in many
of the camera’s parameters including dynamic range and read noise.
The QI Retiga R Series camera provides three user-selectable gain states enable optimal camera performance
for different imaging environments:
■
Gain State 1 ≈ 1.65e-/ADU (Optimized for maximum dynamic range when binning )
■
Gain State 2 ≈ 1.3e-/ADU (Mapped to the linear, single pixel full well of the sensor)
■
Gain State 3 ≈ 0.61e-/ADU (Optimized for sensitivity, 1/2 single pixel full well)
