Sony Semiconductor Solutions has a new image sensor that is exactly 1.00 mm on each side, and it’s built to be thrown away. The IMX742 goes into single-use endoscopes, the disposable scopes hospitals open, use on one patient and discard. Samples ship in November 2026. Sony didn’t give a price.
The headline claim is about the wire. Sony says the IMX742 is the first CMOS sensor for medical endoscopes that digitizes its image on the chip and sends that digital signal down a 5 meter cable. Sony confirmed the 5 meter figure in its own tests, using a very thin AWG44 cable, and the “first” claim rests on Sony’s own research as of the announcement.
What Sony fit into one square millimeter
The sensor has 720 by 720 effective pixels, about 0.51 megapixels, in a square format. Each pixel is 1.00 micron across. The optical format is 1/17.7-type, with an image diagonal of 1.02 mm. It runs at 30 or 60 frames per second with a rolling shutter and a Bayer color filter, and it sits in a 6-pin wafer-level chip scale package.
For photographers used to full frame and APS-C, those numbers look tiny. They are. A camera at the tip of a bronchoscope or ureteroscope has to fit inside a tube that goes into an airway or a urinary tract, so every fraction of a millimeter counts. Sony says it got there by shrinking the circuits around the pixel array, including the analog-to-digital converter, so the chip could stay at 1 mm square while still doing its own digitizing.
The sensor is back-illuminated. In that design the wiring layer sits behind the light-sensitive area instead of in front of it, so more of the incoming light reaches each pixel. That matters more when each pixel is only a micron wide. Sony doesn’t describe the IMX742 as a stacked sensor, so don’t assume it is one. The spec sheet also lists a 30 degree chief ray angle, which tells lens designers how steeply light can hit the edge of the sensor. That’s a big deal when the lens is pressed almost against the chip.
Why digital output over 5 meters matters
Many tiny medical sensors send an analog signal up the cable and leave the conversion to a box at the other end. OmniVision’s OV6948, which holds a Guinness record as the smallest commercially available image sensor at 0.575 mm square, is one example: 200 by 200 pixels, analog output, cables up to 4 meters. Analog signals pick up noise along the way. Sony’s argument is that converting on the sensor gives cleaner images, especially in dark areas, which is most of the inside of a human body.
Sony also uses bi-directional communication, so control commands and video share one cable. That’s how it kept the pin count at six. Fewer pins means fewer wires and a smaller tip. The 5 meter reach gives device makers more freedom in routing the cable.
Disposable scopes and Sony’s sensor business
The pull toward single-use scopes comes from infection risk. Reusable flexible scopes are hard to clean. In 2019 the US Food and Drug Administration urged a shift to duodenoscopes with disposable parts after studies showed staff struggling to follow reprocessing instructions. It later told providers to consider single-use bronchoscopes where infection risk is higher, citing 867 device reports of infection or contamination tied to reusable bronchoscopes from 2015 to 2021. In April 2021 it opened a look into more than 450 reports involving urological endoscopes, the family ureteroscopes belong to.
Sony puts it plainly in the release: demand for single-use endoscopes is growing to help prevent infections and cut the burden of reprocessing. It already supplies sensors for reusable endoscopes and now wants the disposable market too.
Don’t expect this to move Sony’s numbers soon. Its Imaging and Sensing Solutions segment booked 512.7 billion yen in sales in the April to June quarter, 468.7 billion yen of it from image sensors, with phones still the core. Sony expects mobile sensor revenue to dip slightly this fiscal year. A medical part that gets thrown out after one procedure is a small line next to that. Still, disposables have one nice property for a chip supplier. Every procedure needs a new sensor.
One caution from Sony itself: the IMX742 is a component, not a medical device, and it hasn’t been evaluated or approved for medical use. Watch for which device makers sign on once samples go out in November.