Patent Document ID: 5489782
Application ID: 08217423
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for forming a representation of a flux of discrete particles emitted by a plurality of particle emitters, particle emission by each said particle emitter being a random process substantially unaffected by particle emission by any other of said particle emitters, the random process imparting a random noise variation to the particle flux, the particle flux having an information-carrying variation having a bandwidth of interest, the method comprising the steps of: detecting particles of the particle flux, and for each detected particle producing a quantized representation datum of said detection, said quantized representation being determined by a quantization cell size that is smaller than a contrast cell size sufficiently small to preserve contrast for the smallest feature of interest of said information-carrying variation of the particle flux; and filtering said quantized representation data through a band-limiting filter of bandwidth less than a bandwidth corresponding to said quantization cell size but greater than said bandwidth of interest.