How important is a low noise in a CCD camera design?
Low noise is important in resolving fine detail. Electronic noise is always present and “creeps” into the system while measuring the individual pixels during the CCD readout phase. Electronic noise can be minimized by using double correlated sampling or dual slope integration techniques. The best cameras utilize dual slope integration when measuring the value of each pixel element during the CCD readout phase. This is analogous to properly “zeroing” your measuring device each time before measuring the next pixel. Properly designed electronics which incorporate dual slope integration elements will certainly out perform simple sample & hold based correlated double sampling designs when digitizing to 16-bits.
