Patent ID: 7181092

Claim:
An imaging apparatus comprising: a single-chip image sensor with a color filter array and capable of intermittent readout operation in horizontal and vertical directions; a controller for controlling the intermittent readout operation of said image sensor; and an interpolator for processing signals read out from said image sensor in a thinned out pattern designated by said controller to form a reduced image consisting of trichromatic components; wherein said controller reads signals at a plurality of locations on said image sensor corresponding to each pixel of said reduced image and controls reading at that time so that there are two or more types of color filters at the readout locations and at least one type of the color filters thereof is common to all pixels of said reduced image and at least one type of the color filters is not common to all pixels of said reduced image; and said interpolator supplements signals corresponding to the type of unread color filter at each pixel of said reduced image to compute trichromatic components of an observed pixel.