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History

PCO (abbr. for “Pioneers in Cameras and Optoelectronics”) is a developer and manufacturer of high performance camera systems used for scientific and industrial applications.

The company was founded in 1987 by Dr. Emil Ott, who was working at the Technical University Munich for the Chair of Technical Electrophysics at this time. During the performance of measurements with intensified slow scan cameras Dr. Ott became convinced that the existing standard did not meet the sophisticated requirements of scientific applications. He therefore used his know-how to establish PCO to react to this situation.

PCO is based in Kelheim, Southern Germany. It designs, manufactures and distributes scientific imaging devices equipped with scientific complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (sCMOS), complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) and charge-coupled device (CCD) sensor technology. The cameras are applied in low light imaging, microscopy, passive car safety and further fields of applications all over the planet. PCO also operates subsidiaries in the USA, Canada, Singapore and China.

Development

In cooperation with two other companies PCO developed the sCMOS sensor technology and introduced the first sCMOS camera in 2010. “sCMOS technology as originally presented was very unique compared to what was out there at the time. Customers were compromising, using CCDs for a lot of applications but also using CMOS to get speed. Tradeoffs existed. With sCMOS technology, we recognized we could build cameras that could produce all those features simultaneously — that’s where we saw the potential” said Steve Daicos, former president of PCO-TECH Inc. On the one hand CCD-based cameras provide high sensitivity but slow sampling speeds. On the other hand, conventional CMOS cameras enable very fast frame rates but compromise dynamic range. Both sensor’s desirable characteristics are combined in the sCMOS sensor, offering extremely low noise, rapid frame rates, wide dynamic range, high quantum efficiency, high resolution and a large field of view in one image. This makes it particularly suitable for high fidelity, quantitative scientific measurement and low-light-level conditions. Therefore, sCMOS technology is actively used for DNA sequencing, machine vision, solar-cell quality control, measuring velocity and surveillance alongside to microscopy and further applications.

In 2016 PCO introduced the first luminescence lifetime imaging camera based on a high frequency modulated CMOS image sensor: the pco.flim. Wide field frequency domain fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (in short: FD-FLIM) is fast and accurate and therefore an extremely effective method to measure the fluorescence lifetime of entire images. The pco.flim CMOS camera can be used for a vast variety of biomedical applications that require a large frame and high-speed acquisition.