Patent ID: 7652703

Claim:
An imaging device comprising: an array of pixels comprising first and second panels, each panel being organized into a plurality of rows and columns, a first side of said first panel being adjacent a first side of said second panel, said pixels of each row are organized into pairs and each pair shares readout circuitry and a respective output line; a first row decoder connected to the rows of said first panel, said first row decoder being adjacent to a second side of said first panel opposite the first side of said first panel; a second row decoder connected to the rows of said second panel, said second row decoder being adjacent to a second side of said second panel opposite the first side of said second panel, said first and second row decoders being configured to respectively and independently activate rows within said first and second panels; sample and hold circuitry connected to the columns of the first and second panels; and a column decoder connected to said sample and hold circuitry, said column decoder being controlled to address said sample and hold circuitry such that pixel readout from the first and second panels and column readout of stored signals are pipelined, said sample and hold circuitry configured to simultaneously sample signals corresponding to pixels of a row n of said first panel and output sampled signals corresponding to row n of said second panel, and said sample and hold circuitry further configured to simultaneously sample signals corresponding to pixels of a row n+1 of said second panel and output the sampled signals corresponding to the pixels of the row n of said first panel, wherein n is an integer.