Imaging Element Parallel Frame Combining for Rolling Shutter Correction
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Solution Overview
Problem
The rolling shutter method in imaging systems often results in decreased image quality due to rolling shift and insufficient time for focus lens movement between consecutive frames, leading to blurred images, especially during motion picture capture.
Innovation Solution
An imaging element with a storage portion and a processor that reads out image data at a higher frame rate, processes it, and outputs it at a lower frame rate, allowing for parallel reading of multiple frames, acquisition of focus driving speed and rolling shift amount, and decision of combining conditions for image data based on these parameters to perform combining processing and reduce image quality issues.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If imaging is performed using a rolling shutter method during focus driving, then the imaging can be continuously captured, but the image quality decreases due to rolling shift and insufficient focus adjustment time
Solution Approach 1:
The imaging data is divided into multiple frames captured at different focus positions. The processor segments the image data into first through fourth images, each corresponding to different focus adjustment states, allowing selective combination of properly focused regions from different frames to compensate for rolling shutter effects
Solution Approach 2:
Multiple frames are captured in advance during the focus driving process before final image output. The processor prepares and stores multiple image frames at different focus positions, then selects and combines the appropriate portions from these pre-captured frames to generate the final high-quality image
2Manufacturing precision
If the frame rate is increased to capture more frames for processing, then the image quality can be improved through combining processing, but the data processing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The combining processing applies different strategies to different regions of the image based on local focus quality. The processor identifies well-focused regions from specific frames and combines only those portions, rather than uniformly processing the entire image, thereby reducing overall processing complexity while maintaining high image quality
Solution Approach 2:
The processor performs combining processing on selected portions of image data rather than all data. By selectively combining only the necessary frames and regions that contribute to image quality improvement, the system achieves effective processing without requiring excessive computational resources
Data Source
AI summary
Provided is an imaging element in which a first frame rate is a frame rate higher than a second frame rate, and a first processor is configured to read out image data of a plurality of frames in parallel within an output period of image data of one frame defined by the second frame rate, acquire a focus driving speed and a rolling shift amount, decide a combining condition for the image data of the plurality of frames stored in a memory based on the acquired focus driving speed and the rolling shift amount, perform combining processing on the image data of the plurality of frames in accordance with the decided combining condition, and output the image data after combining obtained by the combining processing.