Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation

Takehiro Otani

Shinichi Watanabe

Yuki Ozawa

Tomoyuki Hiro

An event can be detected quickly and accurately regardless of surrounding brightness. An imaging device includes: a photoelectric conversion element that photoelectrically converts incident light and generates an electrical signal corresponding to incident light intensity; a detection unit that outputs a detection signal indicating whether or not a change amount of the electrical signal exceeds a predetermined threshold value; and a threshold value selection circuit that selects the threshold value from among a plurality of threshold value candidates according to a magnitude of the electrical signal.

Imaging device and imaging method

A decline in image quality that is caused by a variation of a gain in an amplification circuit is suppressed. The amplification circuit includes an amplification transistor, a cascode transistor, and a control circuit. The amplification transistor amplifies an input signal. The cascode transistor is configured to, in a case where a drain-source voltage between a drain and a source is higher than a predetermined voltage, supply a substantially-constant drain current to a reference potential line with a predetermined reference potential via the amplification transistor. Further, the control circuit is configured to, in a case where an initialization instruction is issued, control the drain-source voltage to be a value higher than the predetermined voltage.

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Kanagawa, Japan

Takehiro Otani