Color Wheel Extrapolation for High Frame Rate CCD Imaging
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing electro-optical equipment struggles to increase frame rate without compromising spatial resolution, especially in surveillance and reconnaissance systems where target movement exceeds 30-60 frames/sec, with high-end hardware being costly and temporal super resolution techniques offering insufficient performance.
Innovation Solution
Attaching a color wheel filter and motor to electro-optical equipment with a Bayer pattern-based CCD, using a color channel extrapolation algorithm to generate continuous temporal data across channels, and employing techniques like generative adversarial networks and optical flow to create virtual frames, effectively increasing frame rate by 3 times without resolution loss.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If high-end hardware such as high-speed camera is used to increase frame rate, then frame rate is improved, but equipment cost becomes very high
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the temporal parameter by using a color wheel filter that rotates to capture R, G, B channels at different time points within a single frame period. This allows the system to achieve higher effective frame rates by reconstructing multiple frames from temporal information captured through the rotating color wheel, rather than requiring high-speed hardware cameras.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a color wheel filter as an intermediary component between the scene and the CCD sensor. This intermediary allows temporal information to be encoded into the color channel data, enabling post-processing algorithms to reconstruct high-frame-rate sequences from lower-speed hardware captures.
2Productivity
If temporal super resolution technique is used to increase frame rate, then frame rate is improved, but performance becomes insufficient compared to high-end hardware
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs periodic action through the rotating color wheel filter that cycles through R, G, B channels in a fixed periodic sequence. This periodic modulation of color channel capture timing provides structured temporal information that the post-processing algorithm can exploit to reconstruct high-quality frames with minimal performance loss compared to native high-speed cameras.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary action by capturing temporal information across R, G, B channels using the rotating color wheel before the post-processing stage. This preliminary temporal sampling during image acquisition enables the subsequent algorithm to reconstruct high-frame-rate sequences with preserved image quality, avoiding the need for actual high-speed hardware.
3Productivity
If exposure time of each channel is reduced by 1/3 to rotate color wheel at frame rate, then frame rate is improved, but exposure time per channel becomes shorter
Solution Approach 1:
The patent maintains continuity of useful action by ensuring that although each channel's exposure time is reduced, the color wheel rotation and channel switching are continuously synchronized. This continuous operation across R, G, B channels within each frame period ensures that temporal information is captured without interruption, enabling frame rate multiplication while managing the reduced per-channel exposure through algorithmic reconstruction.
Data Source
AI summary
The present invention relates to a method of acquiring image data by attaching a color wheel filter and a motor to electro-optical equipment equipped with a Bayer pattern-based CCD, and then improving a frame rate of the electro-optical equipment by 3 times without resolution loss through post-processing using a color channel extrapolation algorithm.