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Caeleste is a fabless design house specialized in CMOS image sensors. 

The company was founded in 2006 by Bart Dierickx, the former CTO of Fillfactory, and Patrick Henckes, a serial entrepreneur. Both founders also gave the name to the company. Caeleste is the combination of “Caeles” (sky) and “TE” (technology) and it started with a strong focus on space technology. The expertise built on advanced technology for space is now re-used on earth in a variety of applications domains.

The following are a few of the key medical applications where ElectroCraft motors empower medical motion control.

Our mission statement is “The Supplier if Beyond-State-of-the-Art custom designed CMOS image sensors”. The main focus areas for Caeleste are Space & scientific imaging, Industrial & professional imaging and Medical & life science photonic devices. Normally our customers are coming to Caeleste because they have a challenging request for their image sensors, something “Beyond-State-of-the-Art”; it can be that they are looking for a very high signal to noise ratio or for ultra-high dynamic range; sometimes they are looking for a combination of low noise and extremely high frame rates.

The key to achieve this strategic success is in our mission and our business model. We are a fabless design and production house for image sensors. By choosing not to have standard products, we exclusively make custom designed devices tailored to our customer’s needs. In this way, we always work collaboratively with our customers never entering in competition with them.


This makes the difference between us and confection image sensor suppliers in the market. The cameras and instruments build with non-custom designed sensor will achieve the same basic performance. With a tailored approach, strong application driven improvements are possible.


We listen to our customers, we take care of their requirements and we provide them the best technical solution by counseling also on a system level solution making the solution more performant and cost effective. Over the years Caeleste has built a strong relations ship with numerous fabs; presently we can offer 9 different technologies; this allows us to select together with the customer the best possible technology for his application.

In this sense, improving medical technology with dedicated image sensors, is a mission for Caeleste. As an example, the knowledge of radiation damage, occurring to Silicon sensors in space, made Caeleste a key player in the field of X-Ray sensor design.


We have successfully designed and put in production CMOS X-Ray Sensors for dental applications that can now be found in dental practices all over the world. X-Rays are a common example of a radiation that is not visible to the human eye but can still be imaged. Other examples of radiation that can generate an image are the Near Infrared (NIR) field or in the UltraViolet (UV) and Caeleste has conceived and manufactured sensors in both these spectra.

When it comes to medical imaging, Caeleste will be your preferred partner for developing solutions for a variety of imaging technologies like Fluoroscopy, PET, Endoscopy where the team in Caeleste can bring years of experience in the development of the most advanced sensor technology for space. As a turn-key solution provider, we take care of all the aspects of the sensor development, from conception to testing an integration. To achieve this objective, we work in an ecosystem where we have established long term partnerships with key players in the field of the microelectronics and of sensor design.


An example of this business development model is one of our latest research and development projects conducted in collaboration with Paradromics, a California based medtech start up. We developed a Read-Out Integrated Circuit (ROIC) with metalized topside contacts directly bonded to an array of insulated microwires. This serves as a platform for in vivo, intra-cortical recording (recording of the brain’s neurons electric potential waveforms) of unprecedented scale. Caeleste expertise of reducing noise to an extremely low level was crucial for the success of this development.

Additional Information about Caeleste:

Our image sensors are always part of your application. During the design process, Caeleste will help you to optimize the integration effort supporting:

  • development and integration of packaging
  • driving electronics
  • power supplies
  • data formatting processors
  • sensor emulator

Caeleste works with World class partners in their respective field: foundries, digital design houses, medical qualification specialists, testing, dicing and packaging experts.

In addition, Caeleste provides access to dedicated Sensors technologies:

  • Si SPAD’s and APD’s in standard CMOS technology
  • UV enhanced sensors
  • Thick epi for enhanced NIR response
  • Rad Hard design & technology for X-ray & particle detection
  • Direct and indirect X-ray detection

Caeleste can achieve large full well with very low noise providing sensors with:

  • High Dynamic Range ≥ 100 000:1 erms
  • ≤ 1 erms noise with multiple sampling