• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.123-127
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• 2020

In this paper, the estimation of the disparity for depth extraction in monochrome complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors with offset pixel apertures is presented. To obtain the depth information, the disparity information between two different channel data of the offset pixel apertures is required. The disparity is caused by the difference in the response angle between the left- and right-offset pixel aperture images. A depth map is implemented by the generated disparity. Therefore, the disparity is the most important factor for realizing 3D images from the designed CMOS image sensor with offset pixel apertures. The disparity is influenced by the pixel height and offset value of the offset pixel aperture. To confirm this correlation, the offset value is set to maximum within the pixel area, and the disparity values corresponding to the difference in the heights are calculated and compared. The disparity is derived using the camera-lens formula. Two monochrome CMOS image sensors with offset pixel apertures are used in the disparity estimation.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.322-329
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• 2007

A single pixel photon counting type image sensor which is applicable for medical diagnosis with digitally obtained image and industrial purpose has been designed with $0.18{\mu}m$ triple-well CMOS process. The designed single pixel for readout chip is able to be operated by single supply voltage to simplify digital X-ray image sensor module and a preamplifier which is consist of folded cascode CMOS operational amplifier has been designed to enlarge signal voltage(${\Delta}Vs$), the output voltage of preamplifier. And an externally tunable threshold voltage generator circuit which generates threshold voltage in the readout chip has been newly proposed against the conventional external threshold voltage supply. In addition, A dark current compensation circuit for reducing dark current noise from photo diode is proposed and 15bit LFSR(Linear Feedback Shift Resister) Counter which is able to have high counting frequency and small layout area is designed.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.10-16
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• 2012

For high speed visual inspection in semiconductor industries, it is essential to acquire two-dimensional images on regions of interests with a large field of view (FOV) and a high resolution simultaneously. In this paper, an imaging system is newly proposed to achieve high quality image in terms of precision and FOV, which is composed of single lens, a beam splitter, two camera sensors, and stereo image grabbing board. For simultaneously acquired object images from two camera sensors, Zhang's camera calibration method is applied to calibrate each camera first of all. Secondly, to find a mathematical mapping function between two images acquired from different view cameras, the matching matrix from multiview camera geometry is calculated based on their image homography. Through the image homography, two images are finally registered to secure a large inspection FOV. Here the inspection system of using multiple images from multiple cameras need very fast processing unit for real-time image matching. For this purpose, parallel processing hardware and software are utilized, such as Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA). As a result, we can obtain a matched image from two separated images in real-time. Finally, the acquired homography is evaluated in term of accuracy through a series of experiments, and the obtained results shows the effectiveness of the proposed system and method.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.50-57
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• 2008

In this paper, a high-efficiency charge pump for use in CMOS image sensor(CIS) is proposed. The proposed charge pump pursues high pumping efficiency by minimizing the switching and reversion losses by taking advantage of operation characteristics of CIS. That is, the proposed charge pump minimizes the switching loss by dynamically controlling the size of clock driver, pumping capacitor, and charge transfer switch based on the operation phase of CIS pixel sensor. The charge pump also minimizes the reversion loss by guaranteeing a sufficient non-overlapping period of local clocks using a tri-state local clock driver adapting the schmitt trigger. Comparison results using a 0.13-um CMOS process technology indicate that the proposed charge pump achieves up to 49.1% reduction on power consumption under no loading current condition as compared to conventional charge pump. They also indicate that the charge pump provides 19.0% reduction on power consumption under the maximum loading current condition.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.330-336
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• 2007

A single pixel photon counting type image sensor which is applicable for medical diagnosis with digitally obtained image and industrial purpose has tern designed with $0.18{\mu}m$ triple-well CMOS process. The designed single pixel for readout chip is able to be operated by single supply voltage to simplify digital X-ray image sensor module and a preamplifier which is consist of folded cascode CMOS operational amplifier has been designed to enlarge signal voltage(${\Delta}Vs$), the output voltage of preamplifier. And an externally tunable threshold voltage generator circuit which generates threshold voltage in the readout chip has been newly proposed against the conventional external threshold voltage supply. In addition, A dark current compensation circuit for reducing dark current noise from photo diode is proposed and 15bit LFSR(Linear Feedback Shift Resister) Counter which is able to have high counting frequency and small layout area is designed.

• Imaging Science in Dentistry
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.339-346
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• 2020

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the image quality, diagnostic efficacy, and radiation dose associated with the use of a cadmium telluride (CdTe) detector, compared to charge-coupled device (CCD) and complementary metal oxide semiconductor(CMOS) detectors. Materials and Methods: Lateral cephalographs of a phantom (type 1) composed of synthetic polymer filled with water and another phantom (type 2) composed of human skull macerated with polymer coating were obtained with CdTe, CCD, and CMOS detectors. Dosimeters placed on the type 2 phantom were used to measure radiation. Noise levels from each image were also measured. McNamara cephalometric analysis was conducted, the dentoskeletal configurations were assessed, and a subjective evaluation of image quality was conducted. Parametric data were compared via 1-way analysis of variance with the Tukey post-hoc test, with a significance level of 5%. Subjective image quality and dentoskeletal configuration were described qualitatively. Results: A statistically significant difference was found among the images obtained with the 3 detectors(P<0.05), with the lowest noise level observed among the images obtained with the CdTe detector and a higher subjective preference demonstrated for those images. For the cephalometric analyses, no significant difference (P>0.05) was observed, and perfect agreement was seen with regard to the classifications obtained from the images acquired using the 3 detectors. The radiation dose associated with the CMOS detector was higher than the doses associated with the CCD (P<0.05) and CdTe detectors(P<0.05). Conclusion: Considering the evaluated parameters, the CdTe detector is recommended for use in clinical practice.

• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.465-471
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• 2023

This paper proposes a comparator structure that improves the noise and output delay of a single-slope ADC(SS-ADC) used in CMOS Image Sensor (CIS). To improve the noise and delay characteristics of the output, a comparator structure using the miller effect is designed by inserting a capacitor between the output node of the first stage and the output node of the second stage of the comparator. The proposed comparator structure improves the noise, delay of the output, and layout area by using a small capacitor. The CDS counter used in the single slop ADC is designed using a T-filp flop and bitwise inversion circuit, which improves power consumption and speed. The single-slope ADC also performs dual CDS, which combines analog correlated double sampling (CDS) and digital CDS. By performing dual CDS, image quality is improved by reducing fixed pattern noise (FPN), reset noise, and ADC error. The single-slope ADC with the proposed comparator structure is designed in a 0.18-㎛ CMOS process.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.167-177
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• 2022

In order to obtain satellite image products using the image transmitted to the ground station after capturing the satellite images, many image pre/post-processing steps are involved. During the pre/post-processing, when converting from level 1R images to level 1G images, geometric correction is essential. An interpolation method necessary for geometric correction is inevitably used, and the quality of the level 1G images is determined according to the accuracy of the interpolation method. Also, it is crucial to speed up the interpolation algorithm by the level processor. In this paper, we proposed a lightweight CNN-based interpolation method required for geometric correction when converting from level 1R to level 1G. The proposed method doubles the resolution of satellite images and constructs a deep learning network with a lightweight deep convolutional neural network for fast processing speed. In addition, a feature map fusion method capable of improving the image quality of multispectral (MS) bands using panchromatic (PAN) band information was proposed. The images obtained through the proposed interpolation method improved by about 0.4 dB for the PAN image and about 4.9 dB for the MS image in the quantitative peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) index compared to the existing deep learning-based interpolation methods. In addition, it was confirmed that the time required to acquire an image that is twice the resolution of the 36,500×36,500 input image based on the PAN image size is improved by about 1.6 times compared to the existing deep learning-based interpolation method.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.212-218
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• 2012

A stereo vision is able to build three-dimensional maps of its environment. It can provide much more complete information than a 2D image based vision but has to process, at least, that much more data. In the past decade, real-time stereo has become a reality. Some solutions are based on reconfigurable hardware and others rely on specialized hardware. However, they are designed for their own specific applications and are difficult to extend their functionalities. This paper describes a vision system based on a System on a Chip (SoC) platform. A real-time stereo image correlator is implemented using Sum of Absolute Difference (SAD) algorithm and is integrated into the vision system using AMBA bus protocol. Since the system is designed on a pre-verified platform it can be easily extended in its functionality increasing design productivity. Simulation results show that the vision system is suitable for various real-time applications.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.51-58
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• 2010

This paper proposes an edge adaptive color interpolation for an ultra-small HD-grade complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) video sensor in camera phones that can process 720-p/30-fps videos. Recently, proposed methods with great image quality perceptually reconstruct the green component and then estimate the red/blue component using the reconstructed green and neighbor red and blue pixels. However, these methods require the bulky memory line buffers in order to temporally store the reconstructed green components. The edge adaptive color interpolation method uses seven or nine patterns to calculate the six edge directions. At the same time, the threshold values are adaptively adjusted by the sum of the color values of the selected pixels. This method selects the suitable one among the patterns using two flowcharts proposed in this paper, and then interpolates the missing color values. For verification, we calculated the peak-signal-to-noise-ratio (PSNR) in the test images, which were processed by the proposed algorithm, and compared the calculated PSNR of the existing methods. The proposed color interpolation is also fabricated with the 0.18-${\mu}m$ CMOS flash memory process.