Patent ID: 8462244
Filing Date: 2013-06-11
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
1. A method of selectively reading less than all information available at an output of an image sensor for which member-pixels of a subset of an entire set of pixels are individually addressable, the method comprising: sampling information, at the output of the image sensor, representing a targeted member-pixel of the subset without having to read information representing the entire set of pixels; selectively reading information, at the output of the image sensor, representing at least one or more, but fewer than all member pixels, of the entire set based upon the sampling information without having to read information representing all pixels on the image sensor, wherein each pixel can be individually read, independently of other pixels; accessing a first set of sampling photo-sensing pixels of the image sensor and accessing a second set of non-sampling pixels of the image sensor, wherein the first and the second set of pixels have different physical circuitry addressing and control lines going to them, respectively; organizing the entire set of pixels into dynamic and static partitions, each respective partition having multiple pixels; mapping one or more of the dynamic and the static partitions to one or more of the member-pixels of the subset, respectively; and reading the static partitions once and the dynamic partitions multiple times and processing extra partition-read requests for creating a series of images corresponding in time to more frequently read partitions.