The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 30, 2003
Filed:
Sep. 28, 1998
Masaki Yokouchi, Kokubunji, JP;
Takayuki Kijima, Akiruno, JP;
Junzo Sakurai, Koganei, JP;
Yoshitaka Ogawa, Hachioji, JP;
Olympus Optical Co., Ltd., Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
In an image pickup apparatus comprising a CCD image pickup device made up of a plurality of pixels constituted by photodiodes which are two-dimensionally arrayed, a vertical register and a horizontal register, and a CPU for driving and controlling the CCD image pickup device, the CPU has a driving function in an all-pixel read mode for reading pixel signals from all the pixels of the CCD image pickup device, a driving function in a thinning (skipping) read mode for reading pixel signals from all the pixels in a thinned-out fashion, and a device shutter function for extracting signal electric charges from each pixel to control an exposure time. In the thinning read mode, the operation of extracting the signal electric charges from each pixel is carried out one or more times for each read period of one frame.