Infrared detector and imaging system

An infrared detector and imaging system responsive to the scanned image from an objective lens and scanner system, the infrared detector and imaging system comprising;

• a detector substrate,
• a sparsely populated staggered detector array formed on the detector substrate, the detector substrate having a focal plane surface positioned to receive said scanned image from said objective lens and scanner system, each detector in the array being responsive to incident light for providing a signal having an amplitude proportional to the intensity of the incident light received by the detector;
• clock means for providing a sequence of clock signals;
• scanner position signal means for providing a scanner position signal characterizing the image position on the focal plane;
• a control signal means responsive to the clock signal and to each scanner position signal for providing a sequence of array address signals, each address signal within each array designating a memory location in which to store a digital value characterizing the amplitude of the integrated signal from a respective detector;
• an integration and sampling means for receiving, and integrating an array of detector signals from the sparsely populated detector array;
• coupling means for electrically coupling the detector signal from each detector in the detector array to a corresponding integration cell circuit input, the integration and sampling means providing an integrated output signal for each detector signal from each detector in the sparsely populated detector array;
• sampling means responsive to the clock signal and to the sequential control signals for sampling the amplitudes of each integrated output signal from each image and for digitizing each integrated output signal amplitude to provide an array of digitized integrated detector signal values for each successive scanned image;
• a digital memory means responsive to the clock signal and the sequential control signals and having a plurality of predetermined arrays of digital memory locations, each array of digital memory locations corresponding to a scanned image position for storing each successive array of digitized integrated detector signal values into a corresponding image position array of memory locations.

An infrared imaging system detector array responsive to the scanned image from an objective lens and scanner system, the infrared imaging system detector array comprising:

• a detector substrate,
• a sparsely populated staggered detector array formed on the detector substrate, the detector substrate having a focal plane surface positioned to receive said scanned image from said objective lens and scanner system, each detector in the array being responsive to incident light for providing a signal having an amplitude proportional to the intensity of the incident light received by the detector;
• said sparsely populated staggered detector array having:
• at least one pair of left and right detector arrays;
• each left detector array having at least a first column of detectors spaced vertically at uniform detector row intervals on said substrate;
• and
• each right detector array having at least a first column of detectors spaced vertically at said uniform detector row intervals on said substrate;
• the number of columns in each left detector array being equal to the number of columns in each right detector array, said right column detectors being vertically positioned on row locations betweeen the rows occupied by said left detector array,
• each successive right detector array being horizontally positioned to the right of said left detector array at a right array displacement on said substrate.