Patent ID: 7379107

Claim:
A method for reading out charge from an interlined CCD having a plurality of photo-sensing regions and a plurality of vertical shift registers, and each photosensitive region is mated respectively to a CCD of a vertical shift register and a color filter having a repeating pattern of two rows in which each row includes at least two colors that forms a plurality of 5 line sub-arrays sequentially numbered in the space domain; and the color filter spanning the photo-sensing regions, the method comprising: (a) sequentially or substantially simultaneously reading out sets of three lines 1 , 3 and 5 into the vertical shift registers, wherein the charges read out to a respective vertical shift register from a corresponding set of three lines 1 , 3 , and 5 represent one of the at least two colors in the corresponding set of three lines 1 , 3 , and 5 ; (b) summing the charge in each set of three lines 1 , 3 and 5 ; (c) sequentially or substantially simultaneously reading out sets of two lines 2 and 4 into the vertical shift registers, wherein the charges read out to a respective vertical shift register from a corresponding set of two lines 2 and 4 represent one of the at least two colors in the corresponding set of two lines 2 and 4 ; (d) summing the charge in each set of two lines 2 and 4 ; (e) transferring one or more rows of the summed charge into a first horizontal charge-coupled device; (f) transferring alternate charges in the first horizontal charge-coupled device into a second horizontal charge-coupled device; (g) summing sets of two charges of the same color in the first horizontal charge-coupled device by transferring charges within the first horizontal charge-coupled device; (h) summing sets of two charges of the same color in the second horizontal charge-coupled device by transferring charges within the second horizontal charge-coupled device; and (i) reading out the charge in both the first and second horizontal shift register with a double speed half-resolution clocking sequence.