Large field of view CCD imaging system

A charge-coupled imaging device for imaging a wide field-of-view scene to produce a sequence of image frames of the scene at an image frame rate, R, of at least about 25 frames per second, the charge-coupled imaging device comprising:

• a short focal length lens for accepting light from the scene to be imaged;
• a charge storage medium comprising a charge storage substrate having a front side and a back side, back side having no substantial topology, the charge storage substrate being curved in a selected nonplanar focal surface profile that is concave with respect to the back side of the substrate such that the back side is exposed to light from the scene through the lens, and located a selected distance from the lens with the focal surface facing the lens, the focal surface profile and lens-to-substrate distance selected such that the light accepted by the lens is in focus at the position of the substrate;
• a support substrate on which the nonplanar charge storage substrate is supported to maintain the selected surface profile of the charge storage substrate;
• an array of pixels defined in the charge storage substrate by pixel interconnections supported on the front side of the substrate, exposure of the substrate to light from the scene through the lens producing charge packets in the pixels, the pixel interconnections providing selective electronic temporal control of transfer of charge packets from one pixel to another in the substrate;
• means for suppressing generation of dark current charge packet generation in the substrate pixels;
• and
• an output circuit for converting the charge packets in the pixels to an electrical pixel signal of output pixel values based on the light from the scene, a plurality of pixel values together forming an image frame, the output pixel values being produced at a rate corresponding to the image frame rate, R, and being characterized by noise-limited resolution of at least a minimum number, NM, of line pairs per millimeter, referred to the charge-coupled imaging device pixel array, in an image frame configured of the output pixel values, as a function of illuminance of the light from the scene impinging the charge-coupled imaging device pixels, wherein for a scene characterized by a contrast of about 0.3, for a human observation time of about 0.05 seconds, and for an image scene frame rate of about 30 frames per second, NM is given as NM=1900 L0.51, where L is the value of illuminance of the input light impinging the charge-coupled imaging device pixels, for at least one illuminance value between a range of illuminance values of about 1×10−2 LUX and 1×10−7 LUX.