Image sensing apparatus with sensor displacement capability
AssigneeCanon Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorEiichiro Ikeda
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A plurality of images in which pixels are displaced from each other are obtained by displacing the optical path of light passing an image sensing device. The plurality of images have different exposure amounts in image sensing operations. In order to obtain an image with a high resolution and a broad dynamic range, a pixel of interest which suffers saturation or dark in one image is interpolated by pixels in the vicinity of the pixel of interest in an image sensed in a different exposure amount.
Claims63
An image sensing apparatus comprising:
- an image sensing device which has a predetermined number of pixels and senses an object to obtain an image signal;
- displacing means for displacing a relative position between an optical image of an object and said image sensing device during an image sensing operation by said image sensing device;
- displacement control means for controlling said displacing means to perform a sequence of displacement operations, each displacement operation being accompanied by an image sensing operation for the object;
- and
- exposure control means for, in synchronism with each displacement operation and image sensing operation, controlling an exposure of said image sensing means so that an exposure in at least one image sensing operation be a different exposure amount from those in other image sensing operations of the sequence of displacement operations.
An image sensing apparatus comprising:
- a plurality of image sensing devices each of which has a predetermined number of pixels and senses an object to obtain an image signal, and which are displaced from each other by a predetermined distance in a direction perpendicular to an optical axis;
- displacement control means for sequentially changing over said plurality of image sensing devices so that said plurality of image sensing devices sequentially sense the object to obtain a sequence of displaced images of the object;
- and
- exposure control means for, in synchronism with each changing-over operation of said plurality of image sensing devices, controlling an exposure of at least one of said image sensing devices to be a different image sensing exposure amount from those of the other image sensing devices.
An image processing method for sensing a single object by image sensing means to obtain a sequence of images, and generating an image with a high resolution and a broad dynamic range by processing the sequence of images, comprising the steps of:
- sequentially acquiring a sequence of the images of the object which are displaced from each other by a predetermined distance in a predetermined direction, via said image sensing means, while an exposure for at least one of the sequence of images being set to be different from those of other images in synchronism with the acquiring of the sequence of images which are displaced from each other;
- and
- generating an image with a high resolution and a broad dynamic range by executing predetermined processing for pixel data at a predetermined position in the sequence of images on the basis of information associated with displacement directions and distances of the corresponding images, and information associated with exposure amounts of the images.
An image sensing apparatus comprising:
- image sensing means for sensing a sequence of images of a single object, said sequence of images being displaced from each other by a predetermined distance in a predetermined direction;
- and
- control means for, in synchronism with each displacement operation of said image sensing means, setting an exposure amount for at least one of said sequence of images to be different from exposure amounts for other images upon formation of the sequence of images by said image sensing means.
A synthesizing apparatus comprising:
- input means for inputting a sequence of images which are formed based on a single object and are displaced from each other, an exposure amount for at least one of the sequence of images being set to be different from exposure amounts for other images of the sequence of images in synchronism with the timing when the images are displaced;
- and
- synthesizing means for synthesizing the sequence of images input from said input means.
A synthesizing method comprising the steps of:
- inputting a sequence of images which are formed based on a single object and are displaced from each other, while an exposure amount for at least one of the sequence of images being set to be different from exposure amounts for other images o the sequence of images in synchronism with each displacement of the images;
- and
- synthesizing the sequence of input images.
An image sensing method comprising:
- the image sensing step of forming a sequence of images which are formed based on a single object and are displaced from each other;
- and
- the control step of setting an exposure amount for at least one of the sequence of images to be different from exposure amounts for other images of the sequence of images in synchronism with each displacement of the sequence of images in the image sensing step.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.