SBIR Phase II: Reflectance Sensitive Image Sensor for Illumination-Invariant Visual Perception

SBIR 第二阶段：用于照明不变视觉感知的反射敏感图像传感器

• 批准号: 0450554
• 负责人: Vladimir Brajovic
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Intrigue Technologies, Inc.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-02-01 至 2008-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0450554&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; II; Reflectance; Sensitive

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II research project proposes to develop an adaptive CMOS image sensor that estimates and largely eliminates illumination variations in sensed optical images thus reporting electronic images that are indicative of the reflectance of the viewed scene. By eliminating illumination-induced variations from the raw optical images the proposed sensor will eradicate the vision system's vulnerability to illumination variations and signal loss due to high dynamic range. The core innovation is in a signal processing technique for estimating the illumination field from sensed images. The technique efficiently implements as a dense on-chip massively parallel analog processor distributed among the photo-detectors to produce a reflectance sensitive image sensor. By compensating for illumination, the proposed image sensor inherently addresses the wide dynamic range problem, that routinely causes conventional cameras to over or under expose producing inadequate images. Even when illumination conditions do not saturate an image sensor, the vision system has to account for object appearance variations caused by illumination.The proposed research has the potential to broadly impact computer vision performance and reliability. Most present and future vision applications including automotive, biometric, security, and mobile computing applications operate in unconstrained environments and have to cope with unknown and widely varying illumination conditions. Image sensors are rapidly finding their way into people's cars, cell-phones, personal digital assistants, medical and diagnostic equipment, automated drug discovery, cutting edge security, surveillance and biometric systems.

这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段研究项目建议开发一种自适应CMOS图像传感器，该传感器可以估计并在很大程度上消除感测光学图像中的照明变化，从而报告显示所观察场景反射率的电子图像。通过消除原始光学图像中光照引起的变化，该传感器将消除视觉系统对光照变化和高动态范围导致的信号丢失的脆弱性。核心创新点在于从感测图像中估计光照场的信号处理技术。该技术有效地实现了一个密集的片上大规模并行模拟处理器，分布在光电探测器之间，以产生反射敏感的图像传感器。通过补偿照明，所提出的图像传感器固有地解决了宽动态范围的问题，这通常会导致传统相机过度或曝光不足产生不充分的图像。即使光照条件没有使图像传感器饱和，视觉系统也必须考虑由光照引起的物体外观变化。提出的研究具有广泛影响计算机视觉性能和可靠性的潜力。大多数当前和未来的视觉应用，包括汽车、生物识别、安全和移动计算应用，都在不受约束的环境中运行，必须应对未知和广泛变化的照明条件。图像传感器正迅速进入人们的汽车、手机、个人数字助理、医疗和诊断设备、自动药物发现、尖端安全、监控和生物识别系统。