A new technique builds on the light reactivity of digital memory chips to yield a sensor that is perhaps 100 times smaller than current CCD and CMOS images, and better able to reproduce a high dynamic range.
Dubbed the Gigavision Camera due to the number of pixels in a proposed prototype, the system is the work of researchers at the Technical University of Delft, in the Netherlands.
The primary distinction is memory chips create digital data from the light directly – whereas standard sensors today store brightness information as an analog signal, requiring an analog-to-digital converter.
That means the new chip readings are on-off, a digital 0 or 1, for either light or dark. To estimate shades of gray, a software algorithm looks at an array of 100 pixels.
Each pixel is 100 times smaller than those in the latest CMOS sensors, and so a chip made with the new technology that is the size of a standard 10-megapixel sensor will have a gigapixel resolution.
The scientists hope to have a working chip early next year, New Scientist reports.
October 12, 2009
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