Screen correcting method and imaging device

Abstract

This invention relates to a screen correction method and image pick-up device suitable for use in, for example, digital cameras. In this invention, horizontal and vertical signals from a signal generator (SG) 1 are supplied to a semiconductor image pick-up device (CCD) 3 via a timing generator (TG) 2. Horizontal and vertical counter values from the signal generator 1 are supplied to a distance calculation block 4, and the distance from optical axis center position information, provided from terminals 5X, 5Y, is calculated. This calculated distance value d is supplied to a converter (conv) 6, and a distance value, converted according to information from the terminal 7 on the number of pixels of the semiconductor image pick-up device 3, is supplied to a lookup table (LUT) 8, to output the correction coefficients according to the distance from, for example, the optical axis center position. These correction coefficients are supplied to the correction block 9, and correction of signals for each pixel read from the semiconductor image pick-up device 3 is performed. The corrected signals are supplied to the camera signal processing block 10, and the output image signals (Y/C output signals) are output to the terminal 11. By this means, a simple hardware construction can be used to perform distance calculations and execute corrections of lens shading and others, so that the same circuit can be used to accommodate image pick-up units with different numbers of pixels, and there is no need to design new circuits or similar; also, problems of redundant circuits and extremely large numbers of correction coefficients can be eliminated.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.