OmniVision Technologies won the Best of Sensors Award 2021 in the Medical category at the Sensors Converge 2021 Conference and Expo on Sept. 23. The awards were presented by Sensors Converge and Fierce Electronics for technologies that transform the sensors industry and set a new bar.
In response to winning the award, Mengxi Liu , head of marketing communications at OmniVision Technologies, said she was ecstatic.
“At OmniVision, we continuously strive to make a difference in people’s lives by improving our medical visualization solutions and push the boundaries for our PureCel®Plus-S die technology,” she said. “It is encouraging to see our work acknowledged through winning the Best of Sensors award. This helps to validate that our work makes a difference, which motivates us to continue to keep the future in sight.”
OmniVision Technologies has quadrupled the resolution and reduced the size of the OH0TA OVMed® Medical Image Sensor. In doing so, they broke their own Guinness World Record for the smallest commercially available image sensor. The OH0TA’s resolution is 400 x 400, or 160 Kpixels, at 30 frames per second in a 0.55 mm x 0.55 mm package. They also reduced its energy consumption by 20% to only 20 mW.
This means that product designers can use the OH0TA to add visualization to endoscopes, catheters, and guidewires with an outer diameter of 1-2 mm. The increased resolution of the OH0TA allows surgeons to see fine details during ophthalmic, neuro, cardiac, ENT, spinal, urology, gynecology, and arthroscopy procedures. It provides the same crisp images in dental and veterinary diagnosis and surgery.
The OH0TA uses OmniVision’s PureCel®Plus-S stacked die technology to achieve this increase in resolution and decrease in size. This technology also comes with higher color fidelity, low light sensitivity of 3600 mV/lux-sec, and a signal-to-noise ratio of 37.5 dB for higher quality images. The lower energy consumption reduces “chip on tip” camera heat to provide for better patient comfort during a procedure.
The low cost of the OH0TA means it can also be integrated into single-use, disposable endoscopes. This eliminates any risk of cross-contamination that comes with reusable devices. Reusable devices are cleaned between uses, but not all facilities follow the same rigorous procedures. The protocols for disinfecting devices are quite involved, and staff could be under pressure to complete the task. The risk of infection after substandard cleaning procedures is in third place on the Emergency Care Research Institute’s list of Top 10 Health Technology Hazards for 2020. Single-use endoscopes remove this risk completely.
Liu sees many benefits from winning the Best of Sensors Award. “Technology awards offer several benefits: they provide a platform to showcase a company’s technological achievements; influence team pride and ownership; and they can be promoted on social media, the website, etc.” Liu said.
OmniVision Technologies was founded in 1995 and has headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., with subsidiaries around the world. The company develops and delivers advanced imaging solutions for both industrial and consumer markets. Some of OmniVision’s technological milestones include the first mobile handset camera accessory in 2002 and the first 2 megapixel sensor for mobile phones in 2004.
You can see the complete list of the Best of Sensors Awards finalists in all 13 categories here.