Patent ID: 7667747

Claim:
An imaging system, the imaging system comprising: a buffer for receiving sensor values, each sensor value associated with a pixel in a digital image sensor; electronics for comparing a sensor value associated with a test pixel to the sensor values of pixels positioned in at least two dimensions on the digital image sensor, wherein comparing the sensor values includes performing a plurality of comparisons where each of the plurality of comparisons compares the sensor value associated with the test pixel to the sensor value associated with a selected close neighboring pixel, a close neighboring pixel being spatially positioned one pixel away from the test pixel and being the same color as the test pixel; and electronics for determining whether the test pixel is a defective pixel, wherein determining whether the pixel is a defective pixel includes tracking a count of a number of times that the sensor value associated with the test pixel compares favorably with the sensor values associated with the selected close neighboring pixels, and processing the test pixel as a non-defective pixel in response to the count exceeding a threshold.