Patent ID: 7787038

Claim:
A complementary metal-oxide semiconductor type solid-state image pickup device, comprising: a semiconductor substrate having a plurality of well regions formed thereon; and a pixel unit having a plurality of pixels in a plurality of pixel rows on the semiconductor substrate, each pixel in a pixel row of said plurality of pixel rows including (a) a photoelectric conversion element formed in a well region of said plurality of well regions to receive light and produce a signal charge in accordance with an amount of the received light; (b) a readout section formed in said well region to read out the signal charge produced by said photoelectric conversion element at a predetermined readout timing; (c) a node connected to the photoelectric conversion element through the readout section, and (d) a voltage control unit to apply a variable substrate bias voltage to said well region dependent upon the read out of the signal charge by said readout section, wherein the well regions of the plurality of well regions are electrically isolated from each other along each pixel row of the plurality of pixel rows, and wherein the voltage control unit varies the variable substrate bias voltage to said well region while the readout section reads out the signal charge.