Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd.

Sanyo Electronic Co., Ltd.

Hiromitsu Niwa

Yoshinari Kiriyama

Hajime Mizukami

Akira Shimizu

An image sensing system which includes an image sensing device, a driver, a timing controller, an analog signal processor, an A/D converter, a digital signal processor, a line memory circuit, and an interface controller. The image sensing device has a matrix of light-receiving pixels for receiving light reflected from a target object. The light-receiving pixels produce and retain information charges. The driver produces vertical and horizontal scan timings which cause the image sensing device to produce an analog image signal in proportion to an amount of information charges retained in the light-receiving pixels. The analog image signal is output from the image sensing device line-by-line. The line memory is connected to the digital signal processor for continuously storing the image data line-by-line. The components of the image sensing system are divided between a camera unit and the computer machinery. A camera unit includes the image sensing device, the driver, the timing controller, the analog signal processor, and A/D converter while the computer machinery includes the digital signal processor, the line memory circuit and the interface controller.

Image sensing system equipped with interface between image sensing apparatus and computer machinery

A method of efficiently controlling an image sensing apparatus from a personal computer machine includes the steps of defining a control data file for storage of exposure data and image processing data to be supplied to the image sensing apparatus from the computer machine, storing initial values of the exposure data and the image processing data in the control data file, supplying the exposure data and the image processing data stored in the control data file to the image sensing apparatus, receiving the image data signals from the image sensing apparatus screen by screen and displaying the image data on a monitor screen, computing optimal values of the exposure data and the image processing data for each of a drive timing of the solid state image sensor and processing conditions of the image data signals based on the image data signals, and repeating the supply step, the display step, the computation step and the resetting step to display the image data on the monitor screen in a given period until a command to establish production of a specific image data signal is received.

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Ogaki, Japan

Hiromitsu Niwa