Patent ID: 8102444

Claim:
A method of processing a signal from an optical image sensor, said optical image sensor producing an optical image sensor signal, wherein the optical image sensor signal has a measured value when no light is impinging on the surface of the optical image sensor, said value being the signal's black level, comprising: receiving the optical image sensor signal at the input of an analog-to-digital converter, wherein the analog-to-digital converter produces an image data signal therefrom that is composed of positive digital data values and includes a digital representation of the optical image sensor signal black level; processing the image data signal through a plurality of image data signal processing circuits, wherein at least two of such circuits execute at least a black level processing operation on the image data signal input to the image data signal processing circuit producing a processed image data signal; executing a noise reduction processing operation on the processed image data signal producing a noise reduced image data signal; and executing a black level correction processing operation on the noise reduced image data signal producing a black level corrected image data signal.