Did You Know...
...that after Parker Brothers executives turned down the game of Monopoly because it had "52 fundamental errors" (including taking too long to play), a copy of the game wound up in the home of the company president who stayed up until 1 a.m. to finish playing it? He was so impressed by the game that the next day he wrote to inventor Charles Darrow and offered to buy it!
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 8189078 | Imaging apparatus An imaging apparatus includes an image pickup device that images a photogenic subject, a drive part that drives the image pickup device in order to read out image signals from the image pickup device, a digital signal processing part in which image signals outputted... | 05/29/2012 |
| 8189077 | Method for reducing smear effect of dynamic image A method for reducing smear effects of a dynamic image is for an image sensor. The image sensor converts a shot image picture into image data, and the image data is divided into an effective region, an upper optical black region (UOB), and a lower optical black regi... | 05/29/2012 |
| 8189076 | Method for compensating image data A method for compensating image data is adapted for an image sensor. The image sensor has a plurality of photo sensors arranged in an effective region and an optical black region. The method for compensating image data includes a plurality of monochromatic light rep... | 05/29/2012 |
| 8169515 | Processing data from a CCD and CCD imaging apparatus to correct smearing artifacts A method of processing data from a CCD 1 having a line of light sensitive CCD elements is provided. The method comprises the steps of receiving measured illumination data readout from the CCD corresponding to measurements of charge associated with each elemen... | 05/01/2012 |
| 8111308 | Signal processing apparatus, signal processing method, and image pickup apparatus A signal processing apparatus which is capable of performing a smear amount correction processing suitably according to change in the smear amount to suppress overcorrection of the smear amount. An output value of an image sensor and a smear amount on each of vertic... | 02/07/2012 |
| 8040407 | Image capturing apparatus and image capturing apparatus control method An image capturing apparatus comprises: an acquisition unit; a smear detection unit; and a smear correction unit which corrects a level of pixels in a smear region in original image data by a first correction amount obtained by multiplying a smear amount by a first ... | 10/18/2011 |
| 7982785 | Streaking correction signal generating circuit, streaking correction signal generating method, program, streaking correcting circuit, and imaging device A streaking correction signal generating circuit includes a light-shield waveform detecting unit configured to detect signal levels of respective lines in a horizontal light shield by using an output signal of the horizontal light shield of an image sensor; a black ... | 07/19/2011 |
| 7961233 | Electronic blurring compensation device and electronic blurring compensation method The present invention provides an electronic blurring compensation device applied to a digital camera that includes an angular rate sensor for detecting blurring of an image, an solid-state image pickup element for shooting continuously over time a plurality of imag... | 06/14/2011 |
| 7880783 | Image pickup apparatus and method A digital still camera has a CCD image sensor, which includes an active pixel area for image pickup of an image to produce image data. A black pixel area is disposed outside the active pixel area, and produces black pixel data. The image pickup apparatus includes an... | 02/01/2011 |
| 7825966 | High dynamic range sensor with blooming drain An image sensor has at least two photodiodes in each unit pixel. A high dynamic range is achieved by selecting different exposure times for the photodiodes. Additionally, blooming is reduced. The readout timing cycle is chosen so that the short exposure time photodi... | 11/02/2010 |
| 7800663 | Image pickup device and image pickup method In a solid-state image pickup device using a CCD solid-state image pickup device, a vertical smear is reduced so as not to be influenced by a dark current such as a white blemish of the CCD solid-state image pickup device. A dark current variation in the vertical di... | 09/21/2010 |
| 7777792 | Image-capturing apparatus and computer-readable computer program product including image processing program When the quantity of light diagonally entering light-receiving portions of an image-capturing element in an electronic camera is large and thus an electrical charge is generated readily in an electrical charge transfer line, hue correction processing is executed to ... | 08/17/2010 |
| 7728887 | Image processing device and method Image data of a digital signal is inputted to a digital signal processor. A CPU reads out color correction coefficients from a ROM. Weights are added to the color correction coefficients based on information regarding transfer efficiency of a CCD image sensor such t... | 06/01/2010 |
| 7626618 | Solid-state image pickup device, driving method for solid-state image pickup device and image pickup apparatus A solid-state image pickup device includes a pixel array section including a plurality of unit pixels, a reference signal production section configured to generate a reference signal and output a detection value, a comparison section configured to compare a reset le... | 12/01/2009 |
| 7586527 | Detecting smear leakage in an image sensor exposed to a bright light source Smear detect circuitry within an analog front end (AFE) of a digital camera determines when black area pixel values received from an image sensor are indicative of smear leakage. Smear leakage can cause a light vertical line in the resulting digital image. When a se... | 09/08/2009 |
| 7545420 | Image sensing apparatus, image sensing method, and program A purpose of this invention is to execute proper smear correction corresponding to the image sensing purpose or condition without degrading the image quality. To achieve this purpose, the smear line signal of an image sensing signal output from a solid-state image s... | 06/09/2009 |
| 7542083 | Read controller for image pick-up device and image pick-up apparatus In a digital camera that captures object light through a CCD and creates an image signal, a CPU and a bias controller set an overflow drain voltage when smear is read by a vertical drive section to an overflow drain voltage lower than an overflow drain voltage when ... | 06/02/2009 |
| 7436442 | Low light sensor signal to noise improvement A number of different elements are added together in a staggered way to avoid the total loss of resolution caused by the binning process. The circuit for doing this includes a variable gain. In a second circuit for carrying this out, to fixed pattern noise reduction... | 10/14/2008 |
| 7432965 | Black level correcting device and electronic camera A black level correcting device includes: an A/D converting section converting a result of subtracting a feedback signal from an input pixel signal into a pixel value to be output; and a feedback controlling section generating the feedback signal and having a holdin... | 10/07/2008 |
| 7391455 | Solid-state imaging apparatus for controlling a sweep transfer period in dependence upon the amount of unnecessary charges to be swept out A solid-state image pickup apparatus includes a solid-state image sensor having photosensitive cells and vertical transfer paths. The cells are bidimensionally arranged for converting light incident from a subject via optics to electric charges corresponding to the ... | 06/24/2008 |
| 7388603 | Method and imaging system with intelligent frame integration An imaging system disables pixel integration for images within frames that are identified as moving while enables pixel integration for images that are not moving. The system may implement a frame-averaging type of integration or recursive types of frame integration... | 06/17/2008 |
| 7369171 | Read controller for image pick-up device, and image pick-up apparatus A digital camera that captures object light by a CCD to create an image signal includes a read controller that controls reading of light signals from at least two fields of the CCD, in which a field, from which a light signal received by an R-sensor sensitive to red... | 05/06/2008 |
| 7358993 | Digital still camera apparatus, video camera apparatus, and information terminal apparatus Automatic exposure adjustment control that is not affected by smear. An image pick-up device control system of an electronic shutter, a lens aperture and an automatic gain control. Smear amount is calculated precisely even if weak smear phenomenon does not reach a s... | 04/15/2008 |
| 7355656 | Video signal processing device and television receiving device A video signal processing device is provided comprising an input level detecting circuit for detecting an amplitude of a video signal to be processed and an analog/digital converter for performing analog/digital conversion of the video signal using as a reference vo... | 04/08/2008 |
| 7336305 | Solid-state image capturing device, smear correcting method thereof and digital still camera using the same In a solid-state image capturing device 100 comprising pixel arrays 11r, 11g and 11b arranged in a row direction and a column direction which is orthogonal thereto and a vertical register 12 including a plurali... | 02/26/2008 |
| 7330146 | Minimized SAR-type column-wide ADC for image sensors An improved analog-to-digital converter wherein a minimal amount of circuitry is provided for conversion of an analog signal to a series of digital bits. A comparator is provided for generating digital values to which the digital bits correspond. A digital-to-analog... | 02/12/2008 |
| 7295238 | Image signal processing device of image sensor An image-signal processing apparatus (1) designed to process the signals output from a CCD image sensor (10) that reads pixel data for one screen, line by line, divides the pixel data into a plurality of channels and outputs the pixel data thus divided... | 11/13/2007 |
| 7292274 | Solid-state image pickup device driving method and image capturing apparatus for outputting high-resolution signals for still images and moving images of improved quality at a high frame rate A CPU 14 drives the CCD2 by switching its driving mode between an omission readout mode and a summation readout mode. Summing the signal charge of pixels in the summation readout mode offers an increased sensitivity. The omission readout mode reduces s... | 11/06/2007 |
| 7289155 | Automatic exposure control apparatus and method An automatic exposure (“AE”), control apparatus to prevent exposure errors resulting from “smear.” Image-capturing is performed at a single exposure time TI (I=1, 2, . . . n); a CCD output is applied with a CCD drive signal to perform an integrating operatio... | 10/30/2007 |
| 7289146 | Solid state image pickup device In an image reading apparatus using a solid state image pickup element, a smear amount and the total received light amount at whole image taking region of the CCD linear sensor when a light source is turned on without film, are measured and calculated. Using ... | 10/30/2007 |
| 7283165 | Method and apparatus for image processing using weighted defective pixel replacement A method of processing image data comprises obtaining a set of weighting coefficients to be used in calculating replacement pixel values associated with defective sensing elements of a detector array, the set of weighting coefficients including at least one negative... | 10/16/2007 |
| 7277128 | Image-sensing device having a plurality of output channels An image-sensing device has pixel areas for outputting CCD signals of plural channels, and an adjusting portion for adjusting a level of each channel of the CCD signals outputted from the pixel area. A first channel CCD signal is provided from a pixel area 11... | 10/02/2007 |
| 7265706 | Minimized SAR-type column-wide ADC for image sensors An improved analog-to-digital converter wherein a minimal amount of circuitry is provided for conversion of an analog signal to a series of digital bits. A comparator is provided for generating digital values to which the digital bits correspond. A digital-to-analog... | 09/04/2007 |
| 7218346 | Method for driving solid-state image pickup device A method to overcome a disadvantage that the signal charges decrease depending upon the storage time in a photo-electric conversion unit of a solid-state image pickup device. At the moment t2 when a prescribed exposure time (t1−t2)... | 05/15/2007 |
| 7209171 | Solid-state imaging apparatus and driving method thereof Each unit pixel includes a photodiode, a reading selection transistor, a reading transistor, an amplifying transistor, a reset transistor, and a horizontal selection transistor, and thus a MOS image sensor of a dot-sequential reading 5-Tr type is formed. The reading... | 04/24/2007 |
| 7193650 | Image sensing apparatus The level of smear charge stored in a CCD is calculated. If the smear level is equal to or greater than a predetermined threshold value, exposure is performed using a mechanical shutter in order to suppress smear. If the smear level is less than the threshold value,... | 03/20/2007 |
| 7184084 | Method and apparatus for image sensing with CCD A method for producing electronic video signals representative of a focused moveable image includs the following steps: providing a charge coupled device, masking substantially less than half of the lines of the device to form a masked storage area and a substantial... | 02/27/2007 |
| 7167204 | Automatic exposure control apparatus and method An automatic exposure (“AE”), control apparatus to prevent exposure errors resulting from “smear.” Image-capturing is performed at a single exposure time TI (I=1, 2, . . . n); a CCD output is applied with a CCD drive signal to perform an integrating operatio... | 01/23/2007 |
| 7157720 | Multi-mode charged particle beam device A charged particle device is provided comprising a charged particle source configured to direct charged particles in the direction of a specimen under examination and an imaging device configured to convert charged particles to an image representing the specimen. Th... | 01/02/2007 |
| 7154552 | Solid-state image pickup apparatus for generating an image signal by adding outputs corresponding to two types of light receiving pixels having different storage time of information charges Two types of image signals are obtained from a solid-state image pickup device in a frame transfer system and subject to signal processing so as to extend the dynamic range. Two types of mutually different image signals are obtained from a solid-state image pickup d... | 12/26/2006 |
