PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 16186541
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-11
Publication Date: 2019-03
Patent Classification: ["348", "138000"]

Abstract:
An imaging system with a light source controls the sensitivity of pixels to light, by performing both superpixel modulation and curtain modulation. The superpixel modulation may facilitate rapid data acquisition. The curtain modulation may suppress the effect of ambient light. In superpixel modulation, each pixel set may be modulated by a separate superpixel modulation signal that causes sensitivity of the pixel set to light to vary over time, and each superpixel may include a pixel from each pixel set. The curtain modulation may cause pixels in only a small region of the photodetector to be sensitive to light. The curtain modulation may cause the small region to move to track the dot of light, by changing which pixels are in the region. This invention may be used for 3D scanning.

Claim (Index 1):
A method comprising:\n (a) illuminating a scene with light, in such a way that (i) location at which the light strikes the scene changes over time and (ii) the light reflects from the scene and then travels to a photodetector; and (b) controlling, by a first set of signals (\u201ccurtain modulation signals\u201d) and a second set of signals (\u201csuperpixel modulation signals\u201d), responsivity to the light in such a way that the responsivity changes over time, the responsivity being responsivity of pixels in the photodetector; wherein\n (1) the pixels, taken together, are members (i) of multiple superpixels of the photodetector and (ii) of multiple pixel sets of the photodetector, \n (2) each of the pixels is a member of a superpixel and is a member of a pixel set, \n (3) each superpixel includes a pixel from each pixel set, \n (4) the superpixel modulation signal for each pixel set is separate from the superpixel modulation signal for each other pixel set, \n (5) the curtain modulation signals cause a first region of the photodetector to sweep through a set of multiple positions, relative to the photodetector, by changing which pixels of the photodetector are included in the first region, and \n (6) while the first region is located at each respective position in the set of positions, the curtain modulation signals\n (i) cause the first region to include pixels of the photodetector that are then measuring the light, \n (ii) cause a second region to include no pixels of the photodetector that are then measuring the light, which second region comprises all pixels of the photodetector that are not in the first region, and \n (iii) cause the number of pixels in the first region to be much less than the number of pixels in the second region.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 5.0
- Percentile: 98.0
- Lexical Diversity: 2.16923
- Patent Class: 348.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['15449099', '15871444', '15115270', '13645952', '15431713']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.5905465853098093
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.6538296344870721
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.5968748902275356
- Mean Citation Score: 366.411662
- Max Citation Score: 640.5881
- Similarity Product: 593.9616224032222

Labels:
- Claim Label 101: 1
- Claim Label 102: 1
- Claim Label 103: 1
- Claim Label 112: 1
- Combined Label: 1
- Label 101 Adjusted: 1

Dataset: test