Patent ID: 7525576

Claim:
An apparatus for capturing images from a monitored area, and the apparatus comprising: image sensors each providing a rasterized pixel stream corresponding to a succession of images from a corresponding substantially discrete view within the monitored area; an image sensor selector for defining a target view within the monitored area in terms of selected portions of the substantially discrete views from each of the image sensors, a selected portion of the substantially discrete views being a subset of the pixels from an image sensor, and for generating a select signal for selecting individual pixels from each of the rasterized pixel streams which fall within the target view; and a pixel selector with inputs, an output, and a control input, and the inputs each coupled to a corresponding one of the image sensors to receive corresponding rasterized pixel streams there from, and the pixel selector responsive to the select signal from the image sensor selector at the control input to select from each set of rasterized pixel streams from the image sensors exclusively those pixels located within the target view and to avoid selection of all pixels not within the target view and to output a rasterized stream of selected pixels corresponding exclusively with the target view, thereby limiting subsequent image processing to those pixels falling within the target view and avoiding processing of unselected pixels determined by the image sensor selector which fall within the monitored area but outside the target view.