Rolling shutter for prevention of blooming
AssigneeMicron Technology, Inc.
InventorJoey Shah
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A rolling shutter technique for a pixel array is described in which multiple rows of the array are hard reset as the shutter moves down the array. As the rolling shutter progresses down the array, each row is hard reset multiple times before its integration period begins, thereby ensuring that the row is in a true hard reset condition at the beginning of its integration period. Also, multiple rows are hard reset in advance of the beginning of the integration period for a given row, thereby making it less likely that overexposed pixels several rows away will be able to distort the integrating row by blooming.
Claims20
An imaging device comprising:
- a pixel array arranged in rows and columns;
- and
- a control circuit operable to implement a rolling shutter operation, the operation comprising:
- sequentially reading out a selected row of the pixel array;
- and
- after each sequential read out, simultaneously hard resetting, from a non-reset state, a plurality of rows of said pixel array ahead of the selected row.
A method of operating a rolling shutter on a pixel array arranged in rows and columns, said method comprising:
- sequentially reading out a selected row of the pixel array;
- and
- after each sequential read out, simultaneously hard resetting, from a non-reset state, a plurality of rows of said pixel array ahead of the selected row.
An imaging system comprising:
- a processor;
- a pixel array arranged in rows and columns;
- and
- a control circuit connected to the processor and operable to implement a rolling shutter to hard reset each row in the pixel array multiple times before an integration period for that row begins, a plurality of rows ahead of a row selected for readout being hard reset simultaneously with readout of the selected row.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.