Integrated apertures on a full frame CCD image sensor
AssigneeEastman Kodak Company
InventorsGeorgia R. Torok, Win-Chyi Chang
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An apparatus for capturing an image in accordance with the invention includes a full frame charge coupled device with a photosensitive layer and a mask covering a portion of said photosensitive layer with a plurality of apertures. The apparatus also includes an exposure controller for controlling the exposure of the photosensitive layer to the image to be captured and also a shifter for shifting either the image or the full frame charge coupled device to expose a different portion of the image to the photosensitive layer through the apertures. With this invention, a high resolution image can be captured with a full frame CCD image sensor, without loss of resolution. As a result, a lower cost imaging apparatus can be obtained without loss of resolution.
Claims9
An image sensor for scanning an image when the image sensor has a lower resolution than the image, the image sensor comprising:
- at least one full frame charge coupled device with a photosensitive layer, said photosensitive comprising a plurality of discrete pixels;
- and
- a mask covering said photosensitive layer, said mask has a plurality of apertures arranged such that there is one of said apertures that corresponds to one of said discrete pixels, each of said plurality of apertures in said mask being of a size that is less than the size of its corresponding to said one discrete pixel of the image sensor;
- said exposed portions of said photosensitive layer forming charge packets proportional to the intensity of light exposed to said exposed portions of said photosensitive layer and storing the charge packets in said full frame charge coupled device;
- first means for exposing only a portion of each of said discrete pixels, said portion being proportional to said aperture size, and
- second means for changing relative position of said apertures and their corresponding said discrete pixels to illuminate a different portion of each of said discrete pixels.
An apparatus for capturing an image comprising:
- an image sensor, said image sensor comprising:
- at least one full frame charge coupled device with a photosensitive layer, said photosensitive layer being divided into a matrix of pixels;
- and
- a mask covering a portion of said photosensitive layer, said mask has a plurality of apertures arranged such that there is essentially one of said apertures for each of said pixels, and each of said apertures creating an exposed portion of its respective said pixel and the size of each of said plurality of apertures being less than its respective pixel;
- said exposed portions created by the apertures of said photosensitive layer forming charge packets proportional to the intensity of light exposed to said exposed portions of said photosensitive layer in said full frame charge coupled device;
- means for controlling the exposure of said exposed portions of said pixels to the image;
- and
- means for relatively adjusting exposed portions of said pixels to expose a different portion of each of said pixels to the image by adjusting the exposure each of said apertures over each of said respective pixels.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.