Tunable imaging sensor
AssigneePar Technology Corporation
InventorsJon Stuart Schoonmaker, Joseph James Dirbas, Andrew Bruce Bush, J. Antonio Mireles
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A tunable imaging sensor includes a housing with four lenses mounted on a front side. A removable or rotatable filter plate/wheel fits inside the enclosure adjacent the lenses, with a camera plate holding four CMOS or CCD imagers fitting inside the enclosure adjacent the filter plate/wheel. The filter plate includes four filters, one for each lens, while the filter wheel includes sixteen filters which are rotated into position so that four filters are always aligned with the lenses and imagers. Rotating the filter wheel provides sixteen different filter combinations for the sensor. The images from each of the imagers are processed to form a composite image.
Claims15
A tunable imaging sensor, comprising:
- a housing;
- a lens plate attached to a front of said housing;
- a filter plate inside said housing adjacent said lens plate;
- a camera plate inside said housing adjacent said filter plate;
- a plurality of imagers mounted on said camera plate;
- a plurality of lenses mounted on said lens plate;
- a plurality of filters mounted on said filter plate;
- wherein said lens plate, said filter plate, and said camera plate being aligned such that radiation passing through each of said lenses passes through a respective, optically aligned one of said plurality of filters onto a respective, optically aligned one of said imagers;
- and
- wherein each of said plurality of filters that optically align with said respective ones of said imagers is user-selectively changeable.
A tunable imaging sensor system, comprising:
- a housing;
- first means for mounting a plurality of lenses in said housing;
- second means for mounting a plurality of filters adjacent said plurality of lenses in said housing;
- third means for mounting a plurality of imagers adjacent said plurality of filters in said housing;
- wherein said first means, said second means, and said third means are aligned such that radiation passing through each of said lenses passes through a respective, optically aligned one of said plurality of filters onto a respective, optically aligned one of said imagers;
- and
- wherein each of said plurality of filters that optically align with said respective one of said imagers is user-selectively changeable.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.