Nouvelle génération de capteurs : rapide et économes en énergie
Habituellement, le capteur CCD était l'élément fondamental d'un  périphérique d'acquisition d'image et le centre nerveux des appareils photo numériques.
Cependant, ce capteur présente l'inconvénient de consommer beaucoup d'énergie et de ne pas supporter un fonctionnement à haute cadence.
Face à cette situation, Canon a opté pour l'implantation dans son réflex  numérique EOS D-30 d'un capteur de type CMOS de 22,7 x15,1 mm et de résolution 3,25 millions de pixels.
En plus de ses aptitudes à l'implantation d'un grand nombre de pixels avec une forte densité et à la numérisation de données à grande vitesse, le capteur CMOS est nettement moins gourmant en énergie que les capteurs de type CCD actuels (consommation égale à 1/5 seulement de celle des capteurs CCD actuels).
Un autre avantage important du CMOS est son coût de production. Même un capteur CMOS de dimensions relativement importantes peut être produit à faible coût.
En conséquence, le capteur CMOS est assuré de devenir le composant clé des équipements d'acquisition d'image de l'avenir.

Next-Generation Image Sensor: Fast and Energy Efficient
  Conventionally, a CCD was virtually the principal  image pickup device, the core of digital cameras.
This sensor, however, is disadvantageous in that it consumes comparatively high amounts of energy and does not sustain high-speed operation.
In view of this situation, Canon has adopted a 22.7 mm x 15.1 mm, large CMOS sensor in its EOS D30 digital SLR camera, which offers a high resolution of 3,250,000 pixels.
In addition to its capabilities to allow the placement of a very great number of pixels at a high density and data scanning at a high speed, the CMOS sensor is far less power consuming (approximately 1/5 of existing chips), a marked advantage over the standard CCDs in use today.
Another clear advantage is the CMOS sensor's cost: even a relatively large-size CMOS sensor can be offered at a very low cost. So, the CMOS sensor is expected to be the key device for future digital imaging systems in a wide range of applications.

Differences between CCD and CMOS Sensors
    There is a large difference in the image data-scanning method between CCD and CMOS sensors.
Supposing a resolution of 3 megapixels, for instance, a CCD sensor scans the three million charges consecutively, in the same way as passing a bucket from one person to another, and amplification occurs only after the last data is scanned. On the other hand, a CMOS sensor is provided with one amplifier per pixel (here, an
amplifier means a converter to change charges to electrical signals).
Therefore, it can perform signal amplification on a per-pixel basis, saving in this way any useless transfer operations and, consequently, scans data more rapidly with less energy consumption.
Also minimized is noise emission. Furthermore, the CMOS sensor requires  less driving voltage than the CCD, and it can be advantageously downsized, as peripheral circuits can be mounted on-chip.

Problem-Solving Technological Innovations
  While the CMOS sensor has clear advantages in energy saving and the very large-scale integration of circuits, it presented some disadvantages in the early stages of development, such as noise and  pixel-to-pixel non-uniformity uneven pixel accuracy.
Canon introduced various technological innovations to clear these problems.
The first of these was our on-chip noise-removal technology, which permits the sensor to scan signals with a high S/N ratio through a built-in circuit that subtracts at the final stage the noise components previously scanned. Another innovation was the internal charge full transfer system, which allows a complete transfer of charges in the pixels. This system eliminates random noise caused by irregular fluctuation at the molecular level.

BASIS: the Base of Canon CMOS Sensors
  Canon commercialized the BASIS (BAse-Store type Image Sensor) amplification sensors in the 1980s.
However, this sensor could not be used as is for image-pickup devices because of its theoretical limits.
Our research activities continued assiduously, and the development project for CMOS technology started in the mid-1990s.
It was not long before progress in microprocessing technologies made the project feasible.
After we produced several prototypes, we succeeded in demonstrating the actual application of CMOS technology to image pickup sensors.
All the basic technologies we exploited during the development of the BASIS are fully incorporated in Canon CMOS sensors.