The World's Smallest Video Camera 78
fergus07 writes "Medigus has developed what it claims is the world's smallest video camera at just 0.039-inches (0.99 mm) in diameter. The Israeli company's second-gen model (a 0.047-inch diameter camera was unveiled in 2009) has a dedicated 0.66x0.66 mm CMOS sensor that captures images at 45K resolution and no, it's not destined for use in tiny mobile phones or covert surveillance devices; instead the camera is designed for medical endoscopic procedures in hard-to-reach regions of the human anatomy."
Re:45k in lines (Score:5, Informative)
They do use fibre bundles for endoscopes ; they're very expensive ($10,000 kind of expensive).
CMOS sensors are actually a significant step up in terms of
* durability - whack a fibre endoscope on the edge of a surgical trolley and you just broke half the fibres in the bundle. Not so with a wire bundle.
* price - a CMOS sensor, even a medically certified one, is much cheaper than a carefully aligned bundle of photographic class optical fibres
And I reckon you can probably make sensors of a usable size and resolution, with lenses, much smaller than an equivalent fibre assembly.