This book (Practical Electron Microscopy and Database) is a reference for TEM and SEM students, operators, engineers, technicians, managers, and researchers.

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An electronic optical imaging sensor consists of photonsensitive regions which are called pixels. Each pixel converts photons into electrons according to its incident light intensity, accumulates the generated electrons (charge collection) according to its well capacity during the exposure time, and transfers the collected electrons via a charge-to-voltage converter according to its bit depth and readout mechanism. Each of these processes, charge generation, collection, and transfer is also accompanied with various types of noise, which affects the quality of formed image. For instance, a dark current noise is caused by thermal effects during the exposure time and generates nonphotonic charges in the wells. The readout noise is added to the readout signal simultaneously while the collected charge is transferred from pixel to the on-chip amplifier and then, is converted into an analog voltage.

As an example, the Gatan model 679 slow scan CCD camera has 1024 x 1024 pixels and a pixel-size of 24 µm x 24 µm.