Patent ID: 7379110

Claim:
A solid-state image pickup device for generating image signals in accordance with incident light, comprising: a semiconductor substrate having one conductive type; a semiconductor region formed on one surface of said semiconductor substrate and having a conductive type opposite to said semiconductor substrate; a plurality of channel regions extending in a column direction respectively in said semiconductor region; a plurality of picture elements in which electric charges are accumulated defined in each portion of said plurality of channel regions; a plurality of transfer electrodes, extending in a row direction on said semiconductor region, for transferring the electric charges accumulated in said plurality of channel regions and a drive circuit for giving a first electric potential for forming a potential barrier of a predetermined height between the channel regions and the semiconductor substrate region to a first set of a plurality of picture elements and giving a second electric potential for extinguishing the potential barrier between the channel regions and the semiconductor substrate region to a second set of a plurality of picture elements in a first image pickup operation, and for giving the first electric potential for forming the potential barrier of the predetermined height between the channel regions and the semiconductor substrate region to both of the first set of picture elements and the second set of picture elements in a second image pickup operation, first image signals of continuous frame by frame being obtained by repeatedly performing the first image pickup operation, and second image signals indicative of one frame being obtained by the second image pickup operation.