Rolling Band Shutter Motion Compensation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Digital image capture devices face challenges with camera shake, particularly in low light conditions, as small and lightweight devices are difficult to hold steady, leading to blurry images, and existing solutions like taking multiple pictures require significant memory and processing power.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of a rolling band shutter in image capture devices, where only a few columns of pixels are activated at a time, allowing for sequential acquisition of digital values across the sensor, with multiple scanning sweeps to correct for motion and reduce memory requirements.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If multiple pictures are taken and averaged to eliminate blur, then image quality is improved, but memory requirements and processing power increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the image capture process into multiple sequential scanning sweeps, where only a portion of the sensor is active at any given time. This segmentation allows the system to capture multiple sweeps without requiring simultaneous storage of multiple full images, thereby reducing memory requirements while still enabling motion correction through averaging of the segmented sweeps.
2Measurement precision
If multiple pictures are taken and averaged to eliminate blur, then image quality is improved, but processing time and complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
By segmenting the sensor into multiple scanning sweeps and processing them sequentially, the patent reduces the complexity of simultaneous multi-image processing. The system processes one sweep at a time, comparing and averaging only the necessary portions, which simplifies the processing architecture compared to handling multiple complete images at once.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies partial action by activating only a portion of the sensor pixels at any given time during each scanning sweep. This partial activation reduces the amount of data that needs to be processed and stored, while still providing sufficient information for motion correction and image quality improvement through selective averaging.
3Ease of operation
If traditional shutter methods are used, then simple image capture is achieved, but camera shake causes blur in low light conditions
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a dynamic scanning mechanism where the active portion of the sensor moves sequentially across the image area through multiple scanning sweeps. This dynamic approach allows the system to adapt to motion during capture, correcting for camera shake by comparing and averaging corresponding regions across sweeps, thereby maintaining image clarity without complicating the basic capture operation.
Data Source
AI summary
A device and method for compensating for motion in image capture are provided. A processor (205) initiates partially concurrent scanning sweeps (208,209) across a digital image sensor (203) to obtain sets of digital values (210,211). At least a first set of digital values (210) and a second set of digital values (211) are stored in memory (206). An image construction module (213) compares ones of the first set of digital values (210) with ones of the second set of digital values (211) to estimate an amount of motion. The estimation may be accomplished by determining a moment between the first set of digital values (210) and the second set of digital values (211). Upon compensating for any motion, resulting digital values (412) are written to memory (206) as a compensated image. To improve an overall signal to noise ratio, noise reduction filters may also be applied to the first set of digital values (210), the second set of digital values (211), or combinations thereof.