Semiconductor Components Industries, LLC

Amazon Technologies, Inc.

Aptina Imaging Corporation

Honghong Peng

Leo Benedict Baldwin

Yingjun Bai

Daniel Bibireata

Chang Yuan

Wei Li

Brian W Keelan

Geoffrey Heller

Richard Howard Suplee, Iii

Elizabeth Torres Martin

Miguel Flores

Andrew Hanvey

Imaging systems may be provided with stacked-chip image sensors and adjustable lens systems. A stacked-chip image sensor may include a vertical chip stack that includes an array of image pixels and processing circuitry. The adjustable lens system may pass light from a scene onto the image pixels at a number of focus positions. The image pixels may capture a focus bracket of image frames at a capture frame rate for light passed by the adjustable lens system at two or more of the focus positions. The processing circuitry may combine a set of image frames in the focus bracket to generate a focused image. The focused image may have one or more portions of the captured scene in focus. The processing circuitry may output the focused image to off-chip image processing circuitry at an output frame rate that is less than the capture frame rate.

System and method for combining focus bracket images

Imaging systems may be provided with stacked-chip image sensors. A stacked-chip image sensor may include a vertical chip stack that includes an array of image pixels and processing circuitry. The image pixel array may be coupled to the processing circuitry through an array of vertical metal interconnects. The image pixel array may be partitioned into image pixel sub-arrays configured to capture image data using one or more integration times. The processing circuitry may determine motion information for the image data captured by each pixel sub-array and may determine integration times for each pixel sub-array. The pixel sub-arrays may capture additional image data using the determined integration times. The additional image data may be combined to generate final image frames having short integration pixel values and long integration pixel values. The processing circuitry may output the final image frames to off-chip image processing circuitry.

Exposure time selection using stacked-chip image sensors

Apparatus and a method for matching contrast between images of a stereo image pair. A first contrast value corresponding to first pixel information of first image is determined and a second contrast value corresponding to second pixel information of second image is determined. The first and second contrast values are compared and the image having the lower contrast value is selected for compensation. A tone mapping function is generated and applied to the pixel information corresponding to the selected image for generating compensated image pixel information corresponding to the selected image.

Contrast matching for stereo image

Systems and approaches are provided for obtaining high quality image data from lower resolution and/or lower quality image data. An electronic device can be calibrated comprehensively prior to being provided to a user. The calibrated electronic device can be used to capture image data, image metadata, and other sensor data substantially simultaneously. Super-resolution processing can be applied to the captured image data to obtain higher quality image data than the captured image data, such as image data that corresponds to a higher resolution, has less blur, has less noise, has fewer photometric imperfections, and/or has fewer artifacts.

Approaches for creating high quality images

Stereoscopic imaging devices may include stereoscopic imagers, stereoscopic displays, and processing circuitry. The processing circuitry may be used to collect auto white balance (AWB) statistics for each image captured by the stereoscopic imager. A stereoscopic imager may include two image modules that may be color calibrated relative to each other or relative to a standard calibrator. AWB statistics may be used by the processing circuitry to determine global, local and spatial offset gain adjustments to provide intensity matched stereoscopic images for display. AWB statistics may be combined by the processing circuitry with color correction offsets determined during color calibration to determine color-transformation matrices for displaying color matched stereoscopic images using the stereoscopic display. Gain and color-transformation corrections may be continuously applied during operation of a stereoscopic imaging device to provide intensity-matched, color-matched stereoscopic images in any lighting condition.

Methods for matching gain and color for stereoscopic imaging systems

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Honghong Peng