Multi-Angle Imaging Spheres

Cost effective, fast, single measurement captures of complete angular performance information for light sources, displays, and scattering materials.

Our Imaging Spheres products are based on a novel optical configuration to allow simultaneous imaging of a target device or material from all directions on a hemisphere at once. This results in faster, more complete, and often more accurate measurement than can be achieved with traditional goniometric or conoscopic solutions. A
PM-Series™ Imaging Colorimeter (or Photometer) is used to capture the image data, ensuring high accuracy in measurement. The Imaging Sphere can be configured for measurement of far field luminous intensity distributions for LEDs and other small light sources, display view angle performance, or the angular distribution of scattered light from surfaces (both BRDF and BTDF). The Imaging Sphere is ideal for both research and production applications for LEDs, FPDs, display components and material surface analysis.

Three base models of the Imaging Sphere are available, with options to configure the system for two or even all three measurement types:

The IS-LI™ Luminous Intensity Measurement System provides comprehensive measurement of far-field luminous intensity, radiant intensity, CIE chromaticity coordinates, and correlated color temperature (CCT) distributions as a function of angle for LEDs and other small light sources. The IS-LI™ provides critical directionality information that is not available from integrating spheres.

The IS-VA™ View Angle Performance Measurement System delivers high-speed, comprehensive measurements of color, luminance (brightness) and contrast as a function of view angle for flat panel displays and display components. The IS-VA™ compares extremely favorably with conoscopes and goniometric systems in terms of measurement speed and system cost.

The IS-SA™ Scatter and Appearance Measurement System integrates a focused light source, directly illuminating a material sample to measure scattered light. The IS-SA™ can accurately and rapidly characterize surface roughness, imperfections and diffusion properties for a wide range of reflective surfaces and transmissive films. The IS-SA™ generates detailed BRDFs and BTDFs with finer angular resolution and greater speed than goniometric systems. It also has far more flexibility in configuring measurements.

Imaging Sphere Software

The Imaging Sphere is supplied with powerful, easy to use, IS 1.x instrument control and analysis software based on the Imaging Sphere software engine. IS 1.x software simplifies measurement set-up and control and provides easy access to a broad range of image analysis capabilities, including 2D and 3D plotting, histograms, and image differencing. Software functions can be externally controlled through ISEngine™ .Net controls (Framework 2.0) so users can build custom test and analysis sequence in Visual Studio 2005 or other .Net compatible programming languages.