Registration apparatus and method for imaging at variable resolutions

Abstract

An imaging system and method for registering a plurality of fractionally shifted integrated scenes of an image for an imaging system using an optical system and a sensing system, said sensing system including an integer number of photosensor arrays, such as, a CCD sensor array, wherein said integer is a number N greater than or equal to 2, said photosensor arrays having optical line spacings OLS(K+1:K) in reference to a leading photosensor array K and with respect to a lagging photosensor array K+1, for K equal to an integer from 1 to N-1, and wherein each of said plurality of N photosensor arrays further includes corresponding N transfer gate receiving means, so that, each of said N photosensor arrays is capable of being independently triggered to convert optical signals into electrical signals in response to a corresponding one of a plurality of transfer gate signals, TG.sub.i (t), where i is an integer from 1 to N, and wherein each one of said transfer gate signals has a periodicity T and angular frequency .omega., said transfer gate signals being of the general form TG.sub.i (t)=Tg.sub.i (.omega.(t-.tau..sub.i). In one important embodiment of the present invention, the periodic transfer gate signals are shifted in time by a delay equal to the product of the fractional lineskip and period of the transfer gate signal. The fractional lineskip is the fractional component of the optical line spacing between a leading photosensor array and a lagging photosensor array divided by the scanned pixel size.