Patent ID: 6977685

Claim:
An imager system provided in a semiconductor substrate comprising: a plurality of photosensitive, charge integrating pixels arranged in rows and columns of a pixel array for capturing illumination of a scene to be imaged, each pixel comprising a photogenerated charge accumulation region of the substrate and a sense node at which an electrical signal, indicative of pixel charge accumulation, can be measured without discharging the accumulation region; pixel access control circuitry connected to pixel array rows and columns to deliver pixel access signals generated by the access control circuitry for independently accessing a selected pixel in the array; an input interface circuit connected to accept a dynamic range specification input for the array pixels; integration control circuitry connected to access a selected pixel of the array to read the sense node electrical signal of the selected pixel, and configured to generate pixel-specific integration control signals delivered to the selected pixel, independent of other pixels, based on dynamic range specification input provided by the input interface circuit; and an output interface circuit connected to the pixel array to produce output image data based on sense node electrical signals from the pixel array.