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Healthcare laboratory surveillance

Merck is the second-largest healthcare company in the world and a global leader in consumer products and animal care. Over the years, Merck researchers have created ways to treat and prevent a range of illnesses, from the discovery of vitamin B1, to the first measles vaccine, to cold remedies and antacids, and the first statin drugs used to treat high cholesterol. The large pharmaceutical company has constructed corporate laboratories in Naucalpan de Juérez, Mexico, a municipality just northwest of Mexico City.

Merck S.A. De. C.V. was looking for video technology to provide day and night surveillance of the perimeter zone at the corporate laboratories in Mexico. The company needed high resolution and sharp images to enable identification of faces and licence plates, but analogue technology fell short of meeting their needs.

Megapixel solution

To provide high-quality video for surveillance of the perimeter zone at Merck’s newly constructed laboratories, Ariel Maldujano, head of management and technology services, turned to Alarmas Universales, an integrator company with 38 years of experience in the market. Marco A. Godina of Alarmas Universales designed and installed the new system at the Merck facility in Mexico. When looking for technology to provide higher-quality video imaging, Godina learned about Arecont Vision through a manufacturer’s representative.

Arecont Vision’s 5 megapixel day/night cameras were the perfect choice to provide the resolution required for the application at Merck in Mexico, and Alarmas Universales installed five Arecont Vision AV5105DN cameras used with 12VM1040ASI (10 mm – 40 mm zoom) lenses inside 12-inch housings along the perimeter zone.

Arecont Vision’s Model AV5105DN is a 5-megapixel day/night camera providing 2 592 x 1 944-pixel images at 9 frames per second (fps). Light sensitivity is 0.3 lux at F1.4. The camera uses H.264 (MPEG-4, Part 10) compression to minimise system bandwidth and storage needs. The AV5105DN can also be used at lower resolutions for various frame rates up to full motion. The camera provides full-motion progressive-scan 1 280 x 1 024 video at 30 fps, 1 600 x 1 200-pixel video at 24 fps or 2 048 x 1 536 at 15 fps.

The camera incorporates Arecont Vision’s MegaVideo image processing at 80 billion operations per second. Features include forensic zooming to zero-in and view the details of a recorded image, motion detection and image cropping. The camera’s day/night version used at the Merck application in Mexico includes a motorised infrared (IR) cut filter. The camera can output multiple image formats, allowing the simultaneous viewing of the full-resolution field-of-view and regions of interest for high-definition forensic zooming.

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