Image acquisition method and apparatus with mems optical image stabilization (ois)

A digital image acquisition apparatus, comprising:

• an image acquisition sensor coupled to imaging optics for acquiring a sequence of images;
• an image store for storing images acquired by said sensor;
• a motion detector for causing said sensor to cease capture of an image when a degree of movement in acquiring said image exceeds a first threshold;
• one or more controllers that causes the sensor to restart capture when the degree of movement is less than a given second threshold and that selectively transfers said image acquired by said sensor to said image store;
• a motion extractor for determining motion parameters of a selected image stored in said image store;
• an image re-constructor for correcting a selected image with associated motion parameters;
• and
• an image merger for merging a selected plurality of images nominally of the same scene and corrected by said image re-constructor to produce a high quality image of said scene.

An auto focus camera module, comprising:

• a camera module housing defining an aperture and an internal cavity to accommodate camera module components;
• an image sensor coupled to or within the housing;
• a lens barrel within the housing that contains an optical train including at least one movable lens disposed relative to the aperture and image sensor to focus images of scenes onto the image sensor along an optical path;
• and
• a fast focus MEMS actuator coupled to one or more lenses of the optical train including the at least one movable lens and configured to rapidly move said at least one movable lens relative to the image sensor to provide autofocus for the camera module in each frame of a preview or video sequence or both.