Patent ID: 8334496

Claim:
A device comprising: a photosensitive element producing an electric charge as a function of the radiation incident thereon; and a circuitry measuring and timestamping an incident radiation on the photosensitive element, said circuitry comprising: a charge integrator connected to the photosensitive element and converting the charge produced by the photosensitive element to a voltage, wherein said integrator has variable amplification gain: a comparator comparing the voltage delivered by the integrator with a threshold voltage; a memory unit storing the instant when the voltage delivered by the integrator exceeds the threshold voltage, wherein said instant is a timestamp or the beginning of the incident radiation on the photosensitive element; and a circuit controlling the amplification gain of the integrator during an integration time window, wherein said circuit: sets the amplification gain of the integrator to a first value from the beginning of the integration time window up to the instant when the voltage delivered by the integrator exceeds the threshold voltage; and sets the amplification gain of the integrator to a second value, lower than the first value, from the instant when the voltage delivered by the integrator exceeds the threshold value up to the end of the integration time window, the integrator thereby integrating all of the charges produced by the photosensitive element during the integration time window.