Patent ID: 7301574
Filing Date: 2007-11-27
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
1. A charge-coupled device (CCD), comprising: a vertical CCD having a plurality of photosensors arranged in v vertical lines and n horizontal lines corresponding to an n×v frame of pixels, and converting optical signals to electrical signal image data, the plurality of photosensors arranged in v×h (vertical×horizontal) matrix; a horizontal CCD having n line buffers, each buffer holding up to v pixels of image data, and the number of the plurality of line buffers arranged in the vertical direction is less than the number of photosensors arranged in the vertical direction; a first switch circuit connected to each of the vertical lines and the line buffers; a first switch control circuit controlling said first switch circuit so that each line buffer sequentially connects to said vertical CCD, the image data in sequential ones of the n horizontal lines of said vertical CCD being transferred to a corresponding one of the n line buffers; a second switch circuit connected to the line buffers and an external circuit; and a second switch control circuit controlling said second switch circuit so that each line buffer sequentially connects to the external circuit, the image data in the line buffers being transferred to the external circuit in blocks of n×m (m<v) pixels, each line buffer in each block transferring m pixels.