A CMOS image processing sensor for the detection of image features

  • Authors:
  • Masatoshi Nishimura;Jan Van der Spiegel

  • Affiliations:
  • Sankyo Co. Ltd, Shinagawa-K, Tokyo, Japan;Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

  • Venue:
  • Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

A compact CMOS vision sensor for the detection of higher level image features, such as corners, junctions (T-, X-, Y-type) and linestops, is presented. The on-chip detection of these features significantly reduces the data amount and hence facilitates the subsequent processing of pattern recognition. The sensor performs a series of template matching operations in an analog/digital mixed mode for various kinds of image filtering operations including thinning, orientation decomposition, error correction, set operations, and others. The analog operations are done in the current domain. A design procedure, based on the formulation of the transistor mismatch, is applied to fulfill both accuracy and speed requirements. The architecture resembles a CNN-UM that can be programmed by a 30-bit word. The results of an experimental 16 × 16 pixel chip demonstrate that the sensor is able to detect features at high speed due to the pixel-parallel operation. Over 270 individual processing operations are performed in about 54 µsec.