Imaging device for multi-resolution video data
View Patent ↗For a first region being a portion of a storage section ( 202 ), a read-out pulse produced by a progressive scanning shift register ( 206 ) is used to perform a progressive read-out operation of reading out signals from all rows of image-storing pixels ( 221 ). For a second region including an entire region other than the first region, a read-out pulse produced by a skip scanning shift register ( 205 ) is used to perform a skip read-out operation of reading out signals from intermittently-selected rows of image-storing pixels ( 221 ). The progressive scanning shift register ( 206 ) produces the read-out pulse so that the first region moves every frame and an entire region of the storage section ( 202 ) is scanned over a plurality of frames.
1. An imaging device, comprising:
an imaging section including imaging pixels arranged in a two-dimensional arrangement for photoelectric conversion of incident light;
a storage section including image-storing pixels arranged in a two-dimensional arrangement, each image-storing pixel corresponding to one of the imaging pixels;
a transfer section for transferring a charge occurring in each of the imaging pixels to a corresponding one of the image-storing pixels as a signal; and
an output section for reading out the signal from each of the image-storing pixels,
wherein:
the output section includes:
a progressive scanning shift register for producing a read-out pulse to be supplied to a first region being a row-wide portion of the storage section; and
a skip scanning shift register for producing a read-out pulse to be supplied to intermittently-selected rows in a second region including an entire region other than the first region,
wherein the output section is configured so that for the first region, a read-out pulse produced by the progressive scanning shift register is used to perform a progressive read-out operation of reading out signals from all rows of image-storing pixels, and for the second region, a read-out pulse produced by the skip scanning shift register is used to perform a skip read-out operation of reading out signals from intermittently-selected rows of image-storing pixels, and pixel signals of the first region and pixel signals of the second region are read out in combination; and
the progressive scanning shift register produces the read-out pulse so that the first region continuously moves every frame and the first region scans an entire region of the storage section over a plurality of frames.
2. The imaging device of claim 1 , wherein the skip scanning shift register produces the read-out pulse so that positions of the intermittently-selected rows move every frame.
3. The imaging device of claim 1 , further comprising a reset register for resetting charges stored in the storage section every frame.
4. The imaging device of claim 1 , wherein the second region includes the first region.
5. The imaging device of claim 1 , wherein the imaging section captures image with a constant exposure time.