Patent ID: 6678048
Filing Date: 2004-01-13
Classification: G01J,G06K,H04N

Abstract:
A multispectral sensor in which an image of a scene is in motion relative to an image plane wherein the sensor emphasizes at least one aspect of the scene comprising:optical apparatus to focus the scene onto an image plane; at least one time delay and integrate (TDI) detector array located at the image plane and having m detector elements in each row, where the rows are oriented perpendicular to the direction of motion, and n rows of detector elements to form an m x n array; and a multispectral filter above each of the at least one TDI arrays, the multispectral filter passing a separate bandwidth (spectral bin) of light from the scene onto each of the n rows; wherein the at least one TDI array contains means to accumulate successively the signals from detector elements in successive rows as pixels in the scene move across the detector elements along the direction of motion and means to vary the amplitude of the signals from selected detector elements to emphasize the at least one aspect of the scene.