Clarion Co

Takahide Kojima

Teruki Takahashi

Kouji Obata

Tsutomu Usui

Norihiko Nakano

In a vehicle-mounted camera system, an appropriate white balance correction processing according to a situation is executed to a long exposure time image and a short exposure time image shot in variously changing illumination environments. A vehicle-mounted camera system includes a vehicle-mounted camera that performs relatively long exposure time shooting and short exposure time shooting, a signal processing device (signal processing device) that executes a white balance correction processing for each of a long exposure time image and a short exposure time image, composes these images after the white balance correction processing, and generates a high dynamic range image, and a system control part (processing switch device) that obtains an illumination environment in which the vehicle is placed, and switches the white balance correction processing for the long exposure time image and the white balance correction processing for the short exposure time image according to the illumination environment.

Vehicle-mounted camera system

To obtain a color signal having a wide dynamic range (i.e., high sensitivity) and color reproducibility similar to human vision characteristics regardless of the amount of the near infrared components contained in light captured by an imaging device. The imaging device is configured to receive light which has transmitted through the filters selectively transmit light having different wavelengths from each other, to generate an output signal RAWby converting the received light using the image pickup elementhaving the plurality of pixels, and to remove, by a removal rate E (Rr) determined in accordance with the ratio Rr of near infrared light component calculated for each pixel, the near infrared light component for each pixel from the generated output signal RAW, to thereby generate an infrared-separated signal (Ra, Ga, Ba).

Imaging device

An image sensor including a plurality of pixels on which three types of filters which transmit light having different wavelengths and have transmittances equal to each other in a visible light region, and a clear filter in which a transmittance of the visible light region is expressed by a linear sum of the transmittances of the filters and which has a transmittance equal to the transmittances of the filters in a near-infrared light region are arranged, the image sensor outputs a first output signal, an output signal linear-transforming part transforms the first output signal into a second output signal having linearity, a color signal-generating part generates color signals, an infrared-separating part generates infrared-separated color signals, a luminance signal-generating part generates a luminance signal from the first output signal, and a color-luminance-combining part combines the infrared-separated color signals and the luminance signal and generates video signals.

An imaging apparatus has an image pickup device having a plurality of pixels having input-output characteristic which non-linearly changes according to input and a plurality of color filters in a plurality of colors arranged on respective pixels; an output signal linear convertor converting a first output signal from the image pickup device into a second output signal which is predicted to be output from the image pickup device on the assumption that the image pickup device outputs the second output signal which linearly changes all over a range of the input brightness; a color signal generator generating color signals in the plurality of colors on each pixel based on the second output signal; a brightness signal generator generating a brightness signal from the first output signal; and a color brightness composition part combining the color signals and the brightness signal to generate an image signal.

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Saitama, Japan

Takahide Kojima