High-sensitivity infrared detector and an infrared camera using such a detector

A high-sensitivity infrared detector system having a matrix of individual photosensitive cells (P11, . . . Pnp) means of forming a video signal following multiplexing, by a CCD read circuit, of luminance signals output in succession by the cells, proportional to luminous flux individually received from pixels in an image of the scene observed and received by each corresponding cell during a periodic scan of the image of the scene controlled by a scanning system, and a circuit to convert the video signal into digital luminance values corresponding to the signals output by the photosensitive cells, the detector system comprising:

• an accumulation circuit to accumulate, during reads of successive frames, luminance values output by adding a luminance value output of each detector cell when reading a frame either to the luminance value output, without any shift by a given cell or, to the luminance value output, after a shaft, by an adjacent cell partially covering the same pixel when the next frame is read;
• and selection circuits including a processor, to select in accordance with data relating to the characteristics of the detector scan and delivered by the scanning system to the selection circuits, sequences of binary values corresponding to the type of successive additions to be done, either with or without a cell shift, to apply in time each binary value of such sequences to each corresponding luminance value of each frame read, in order to address in the accumulation circuit such luminance values, whether or not shifted.