9. Conclusion and outlook

Over the past fifty years, constant progress has led to the development of products dedicated to night vision and low-light imaging. The digital photography market has made the ability to image at night with capabilities far superior to those of the eye accessible to the greatest number of people. To see for yourself, just take a night shot with your camera's sensitivity set to at least ISO 800 and an exposure of 30s or more against a starry sky.

The recent emergence of ultra-low-noise CMOS arrays means that, in the next few years, we can expect to see sensors with quantum efficiencies close to 100% in the visible and near-infrared range, with noise levels of less than 1 electron for arrays of more than 5 mega-pixels, with pitches of just a few micrometers. The military, scientific and civil markets associated with such components should also make it possible to...