Patent ID: 9578266
Date: 2017-02-21
CPC Classifications: H01L,H04N

Claim:
1. An apparatus comprising: an image sensor array (ISA) in an imaging system; an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) coupled to the ISA to digitize the signal from an ISA element of the ISA; a first module coupled to the ADC to perform a black level calibration on a digitized signal from the ISA element such that the digitized signal from the ISA element corresponds to a level of zero illuminance when no light is incident to the ISA element; a second module coupled to the ADC to normalize a digitized signal from the ISA element by removing at least one of a color cast introduced by illuminating a scene using light of a particular color temperature or a color cast introduced by a colored component of an optical flare incident to the ISA; defect comparator to perform a comparison to compare an illuminance corresponding to the signal from the ISA element with an illuminance associated with the optical flare; a defect location memory coupled to the defect comparator to tag the ISA element as unusable based on a result from the comparison; and a flare calibration memory coupled to the defect comparator, the flare calibration memory to store a flare calibration value, the flare calibration value corresponding to a magnitude of a signal from a calibration ISA element associated with a calibration imaging system, wherein the flare calibration value is representative of a level of the illuminance associated with the optical flare.