# US 10,375,299 B2 · Imaging device and imaging method using compressed sensing

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- Number: US 10,375,299 B2
- Document ID: US10375299B2
- Status: Granted
- Kind: B2
- Application number: 16/136,741
- Filed: 2018-09-20
- Published: 2019-01-17
- Granted: 2019-08-06
- Earliest claimed: 2013-05-29
- Assignees: Panasonic Intellectual Property Management Co., Ltd.
- Applicants: Panasonic Intellectual Property Management Co., Ltd.
- Inventors: Satoshi Sato; Takeo Azuma; Hiroyuki Motoyama; Jun Ozawa
- Web page: https://patentgrep.com/patent/US10375299B2

## CPC

- H04N 25/46: by combining or binning pixels
- H04N 23/80: Camera processing pipelines; Components thereof
- H04N 25/00: Circuitry of solid-state image sensors [SSIS]; Control thereof
- H04N 25/70: SSIS architectures; Circuits associated therewith
- H04N 25/76: Addressed sensors, e.g. MOS or CMOS sensors
- G09G 2340/02: Handling of images in compressed format, e.g. JPEG, MPEG
- G09G 2370/18: Use of optical transmission of display information
- H04N 23/63: by using electronic viewfinders
- H04N 25/60: Noise processing, e.g. detecting, correcting, reducing or removing noise
- H04N: PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
- G09G: ARRANGEMENTS OR CIRCUITS FOR CONTROL OF INDICATING DEVICES USING STATIC MEANS TO PRESENT VARIABLE INFORMATION (arrangements for transferring data between digital computers and displays G06F3/14; static indicating arrangements comprising an association of a number of separate sources or light control cells G09F9/00; static indicating arrangements comprising integral associations of a number of light sources H01J, H01K, H10H, H05B33/12; scanning, transmission or reproduction of documents or the like, e.g. facsimile transmission, details thereof H04N1/00)

## Abstract

In an imaging device, a difference calculation unit calculates a differential signal between charge signals that have been accumulated and are held by first and charge holding units with different timings. A multiple sampling unit performs multiple sampling processing on the differential signal, and an analog digital conversion unit converts a signal that has undergone multiple sampling processing to a digital signal. That is, multiple sampling processing is performed on a differential signal with a higher sparsity than that of an image signal.

## Claims

### Claim 1

An imaging device, comprising:
a photoelectric conversion unit including a plurality of pixels and configured to convert optical signals received by the plurality of pixels to electrical signals;
a first charge holding unit configured to accumulate the electrical signals obtained by converting the optical signals by the photoelectric conversion unit and hold the accumulated signals as first charge signals;
a second charge holding unit configured to accumulate the electric signals obtained by converting the optical signals by the photoelectric conversion unit with a different timing from accumulation by the first charge holding unit and hold the accumulated signals as second charge signals;
a difference calculation unit configured to obtain differential signals based on differential values between the first charge signals and the second charge signals, by calculating, for each of the plurality of pixels, a differential value between a corresponding first charge signal held by the first charge holding unit and a corresponding second charge signal held by the second charge holding unit;
a multiple sampling unit configured to perform, on the differential signals obtained by the difference calculation unit, multiple sampling processing which is processing for sampling signals of pixels each located at a predetermined position from an original charge signal and adding up the sampled signals to generate a new signal;
an analog digital conversion unit configured to convert an output signal of the multiple sampling unit to a digital signal;
an image reconstruction unit configured to perform reconstruction processing on an output signal of the analog digital conversion unit using multiple sampling information based on processing executed by the multiple sampling unit and obtain an image signal; and
an output unit configured to output an image reconstructed by the image reconstruction unit.

### Claim 2 (depends on 1)

The imaging device of claim 1, wherein
the multiple sampling unit performs the multiple sampling processing by a predetermined pixel unit selected from the differential signals of the plurality of pixels.

### Claim 3 (depends on 2)

The imaging device of claim 2, wherein
the predetermined pixel unit is comprised of pixels not adjacent to each other.
