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Toshiba publishes a Youtube video demoing its "Bright Mode" announced half a year ago:

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Yahoo, SeekingAlpha: Baird said its checks indicate OmniVision is regaining smartphone market share in China. Baird's analyst sees strong PureCel design activity, and forecasts margin expansion.

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EETimes list "Silicon 60: Hot Startups to Watch" includes quite a lot of imaging companies:

Cognivue Corp. (Gatineau, Quebec) was spun off in 2009 from Korea's MtekVision to focus on so-called cognitive processing that uses parallel processing engines optimized for tasks such as image recognition and identification. Cognivue provides SoCs, software, and IP to capture, analyze, and render video and images for smart cameras.

Dual Aperture Inc. (Palo Alto, Calif.), founded in 2009, has developed a dual aperture RGB-IR sensor technology that can combine imaging and depth perception in a single sensor. The company is pitching the technology to form the basis of gesture recognition command and control in consumer, automotive, and industrial products.

Geo Semiconductor Inc. (San Jose, Calif.), founded in 2009, is a fabless semiconductor company that designs video and geometry processing integrated circuits (ICs). Its chips have found use in consumer displays and projection systems, and the company is extending its reach into automotive and security applications.

Gpixel Inc. (Changchun, China) develops high-end CMOS image sensor solutions for industrial, medical, and scientific applications. Founded in 2013, the company worked with foundry Tower Semiconductor Ltd. to produce a 150 Mpixel full-frame CMOS image sensor.

InVisage Technologies Inc. (Menlo Park, Calif.) is a fabless semiconductor company developing QuantumFilm, an image-sensing technology that it claims has superior performance to silicon. Its first product enables the high-resolution images from handheld devices such as camera phones and PDAs. Founded in 2006, InVisage Technologies is venture funded by RockPort Capital, Charles River Ventures, InterWest Partners, and OnPoint Technologies.

Isorg SA (Grenoble, France), founded in 2010 as a spinoff from CEA-LITEN, converts plastic and glass surfaces into smart surfaces through the application of printed, organic, optoelectronic sensors. The possibility of 3D product integration allows the recognition of many shapes and form factors. The company name is a contraction of Image Sensor ORGanic.

Pelican Imaging Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.), founded in 2008, is commercializing array cameras for the mobile market. Pelican's array camera, essentially replacing a single image sensor with an array of devices, captures depth information and addresses challenges posed by conventional camera design and small pixels.

Softkinetic SA (Brussels, Belgium), founded in 2007, is a developer of sensor-to-software 3D gesture recognition systems. It has licensed its platform to Texas Instruments and Melexis.

TeraDeep Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) was founded in December 2013 as a spinoff from Purdue University to focus on the design of mobile coprocessors and neural network hardware for the understanding of images and videos.

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Solid State Imaging Forum being organized by Albert Theuwissen announces its 2014 theme and a lecturer: "Advanced Digital Image Processing" by Majid Rabbani, an adjunct faculty at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and the University of Rochester (U of R), IEEE and SPIE Fellow member, and a Kodak Distinguished Inventor. The Forum is to be held on Dec. 11-12, 2014, in Voorburg, the Netherlands. The audience will be strictly limited to enhance and stimulate the interaction with the speaker as well as to allow close contacts between the participants.

The tentative agenda is:

• Review of fundamentals
• Resizing or Interpolation Algorithms
• Dynamic Range Compression (DRC)
• Sharpening Techniques
• Motion Estimation
• Noise Reduction
• Image Deblurring (Restoration)
• Super-resolution from multiple image captures (e.g., video)
• Object detection, recognition and image matching

The Forum registration is open now.

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Yole Developpement's 2014 update of "3DIC & 2.5D TSV Interconnect for Advanced Packaging" report shows that image sensors keep being the biggest application for TSV technologies in the nearest years:

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Business Wire: ON Semi's new KAI-08051 CCD provides improved light sensitivity, reduced read noise, and improved color accuracy compared to the previous generation device for applications such as Intelligent Traffic, Surveillance, Medical Imaging, and Industrial Inspection. The KAI-08051 shares the same 5.5um pixel architecture, 8MP resolution, 15fps readout rate, and 4/3 optical format as the existing KAI-08050, but improves its performance through the use of an improved amplifier design, newly optimized microlens structure, and new color filter pigments in both Bayer and Sparse color configurations. The KAI-08051 is backward compatible with the KAI-08050, requiring at most minor modifications to the firmware used in existing camera designs.

"CCD image sensors continue to provide the critical image quality required in many key applications," said Chris McNiffe, VP Image Sensor Business unit at ON Semiconductor. "The enhanced performance available from the new KAI-08051 Image Sensor reflects our on-going commitment to improve the capability of our existing products and to deliver the industry’s most advanced image sensors using both CCD and CMOS technology."

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IEEE Spectrum: Palo Alto-based startup Light closed a $9.7M round of venture funding. The stealth-mode startup presents itself as "a team of creative technologists on a mission to reimagine the art and science of photography."

Light occupies the same address as Tinz Optics company, and Tinz URL redirects to Light, so IEEE Spectrum speculates that Tinz morphed into Light. Rajiv Laroia, an IEEE Fellow, was in 2013 identifying himself as a founder of Tinz Optics, "a company developing technology that miniaturizes lenses/cameras while preserving the quality."

Thanks to DM for the link!

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Inspired by Albert Theuwissen's PTC courses, Forza Silicon releases PTC plugin for NIH ImageJ freeware image viewing and analysis software package. The plugin computes the PTC, and gives a graphical plot from which the conversion gain and read noise can be fit to the PTC curve.


Talking about Forza, it has recently updated web site with a very impressive gallery of the past projects and a history page tracing the company roots to the early JPL works.

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Bpifrance, Sofimac CEA Investissement Partners, and unnamed angel investors, participate in ISORG financing round totaling 6.4M euros. The new funds will enable ISORG, which already operates a pre-industrial pilot line in Grenoble, build a new production line to start volume manufacturing in 2015, and deploy internationally.

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Job searching site indeed.com offers some nice salary trend graphs. Here are the US national graphs saying that after the difficult 2013, salaries are on the rise this year:

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The batch of patent applications is supposed to speedup the image sensor readouts or solve the problems with slow readouts.

First, Sony patent application US20140160334 "Image pickup device, control method, and image pickup apparatus" by Hayato Wakabayashi proposes to read 4 rows simultaneously, while keeping a smooth progression of the rolling shutter:


The ramp DACs 142 and 152 work with a delay to have a smooth shutter curtain advance:


Omnivision application US20140183333 "Conversion circuitry for reducing pixel array readout time" by Robert Johansson proposes to alternate the readout signal polarity in even and odd columns:


The successive approximation ADC cycle starts from switching the cap array reference to an opposite one. Having the input inversion allows even and odd column ADCs use the opposite polarity references, and thus reduce the reference load and speed up the conversion: "Conventional image sensors are not configured to have conversion circuitry with SAR ADCs having capacitors that charge to opposite voltage references. In some conventional image sensors, all of the SAR ADCs in the conversion circuitry are all the same and the capacitors arrays charge to the same voltage reference. This can cause longer settling times for voltage reference because the capacitor arrays inside the SAR ADCs all tax the same voltage reference (at around the same time) by drawing charge from the voltage reference during the SAR ADC's binary search sequence."

Once we talk about the high speed shooting and necessity to reduce the rolling shutter distortions, Anyony Cog brought to my attention Samsung patent application US20130188069 "Methods and apparatuses for rectifying rolling shutter effect" by Omry Sendik, German Voronov, and Michael Slutsky. The application is said to have an unusually detailed description of the compensating algorithm. Not to go too much into the algorithmic details, below is a general structure of the proposed solution:

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Sharp publishes an application note on its active triangulation-based depth sensors series GP2Y0D8x. The principle of the sensor is shown on the figure:


It works fine in most of the cases, and allows even a simplistic movement detection. However, in some use cases the distance is determined incorrectly (sensor thinks that the object located at position C):

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Visera patent application "Image sensor for light field device and manufacturing method thereof" by Wei-Ko Wang, Chin-Ching Chang, Chia-Hui Wu, Chien-Hsiung Huang, Cheng-Xuan LIN, Chieh-Yuan Cheng, and Chang Wei Chen proposes two-layer microlens integrated process for light field imaging:

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Business Wire: Kunshan, China-based HuaTian Technologies Ltd., also known as Q-Tech, is exapnding its WLP facility and purchasing SPTS (soon to become Orbotech) Sigma fxP PVD system to deposit under bump metallization (UBM) for its 300mm Flip Chip line and interconnects for their CMOS sensor packages. The company is well known for its cost-effective image sensor wafer level packaging and its wafer level optics. The company's milestones and customer list are quite impressive:

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DPReview quotes Japanese-language Nikkkei article with Sony talking on its curved sensor plans. The article is accompanied by a low resolution image from the curved senasor and says that Sony has difficulties combining curved sensor with "high power optical zoom lens." So, Sony considers to use a digital zoom instead.

Image from Sony curved sensor

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Albert Theuwissen discusses the slanted edge target approach to measure MTF in his latest posts. The June post describes the basics of the measurement, while the July continuation talks about the edge angle optimizations.

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Rambus applies for another conditional reset pixel patent, the US20140175264 "Pixel Structure and Reset Scheme" by Song Xue, Thomas Vogelsang. Few figures from the application:

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IC Insights forecasts almost all major image sensor markets to stagnate starting 2016. Few bright spots are automotive, industrial/scientific/medical and PC/tablet markets:

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Sony technology page presents two new trademarks:

• Starvis is a BSI pixel design optimized for surveillance cameras with improved sensitivity and noise reduction, typical sensitivity of more than 2000mV per 1 μ㎡ (color, F5.6, 1s accumulated conversion), and improved light utilization by including the NIR range.
• Pregius is global shutter pixel technology for APS CMOS image sensors that use a low-noise CCD structure, and realizes high picture quality.

The company's Youtube video shows Pregius global shutter in action:

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Haaretz: Qualcomm is buying the Israeli operations of CSR (former Zoran) for about $44M. On June 24, CSR announced it had sold the unit but didn’t disclose the buyer. Now, a spokesman for Qualcomm confirmed it was the buyer.

"Telephone is quickly becoming the consumer’s main camera so that the camera function is increasingly becoming one of the main factors differentiating cellphones," Qualcomm said. "Camera functions are right now one of the main considerations of consumers when they buy a phone. This acquisition will enable us to continue successfully developing cameras so that smartphones will provide the same quality as a digital camera."

Update: EETimes publishes few more details on the deal.

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Lightfield-Forum noticed Sony patent application on lightfield camera that maintains the full image sensor resolution while providing stereo imaging. The 73-page, 43-figure US20140071244 application "Solid-state image pickup device and camera system" by Isao Hirota proposes dual level microlens and two-sided image senosr with 45-deg rotated pixels to achieve their promise:


Thanks to DM for the link!

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EETimes publishes an article on BMW 3 Series rear view camera teardown with Omnivision's sensor inside. The estimated cost of the camera is between $50 and $75, while the price paid for the teared down device was $400.

The rear view camera board

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MK: Siliconfile officially becomes a part of Hynix and has been delisted from KOSDAQ. SK Hynix owns Silicon File’s entire shares as of April 22, 2014.

Business Week: SK Hynix has acquired the remaining 72.07% stake in Siliconfile for KRW 48.8B ($47.4M) in stock transaction.

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ESPROS Photonics publishes Youtube video showing its epc610 ToF sensor evaluation kit:

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EETimes-Europe: The General Vision's (Petaluma, CA) bid for LFoundry Rousset fab failed to convince the judge that it was sustainable, according to reports of a decision handed down on June 13, 2014. The fab equipmemnt and its IP assets were acquired by Six Semicondutores, Brazil.

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Formfactor and Advantest presentation "Can testers and probe cards keep up with speed requirements for image sensors?" at Semiconductor Test Workshop in San Diego, CA on June 8-11, 2014 talks about the high speed interface testing issues:

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Sony has updated its web page on Xarina, the family of all-in-one HD image processors for security cameras. A support for 4K cameras is coming sometime in 2015:

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PresseBox: Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects group (ATAP) is demonstrating their latest Project Tango Tablet Development Kits at Google I/O 2014 today. Now, for the first time, the tablets with integrated pmd-based depth sensors are shown publicly. Besides a motion tracking and a RGB camera the tablets utilize a pmd-based 3D ToF sensor to allow the tablet to sense its environment in space and motion. The ToF sensor used in the tablet has been jointly developed by Infineon and pmdtechnologies.

"We are proud that Google's ATAP group shows the world for the first time how our 3D technology is contributing to the addition of environmental awareness to mobile devices in a new and unique way. We also look forward to seeing what kind of amazing applications will be developed based on this tablet as the possibilities are endless in applications such as augmented reality, architecture, retail, gaming, and many more.", says Bernd Buxbaum, CEO of pmdtechnologies.


A Youtube video shows Project Tango evolution and possible applications:



Update: PMD publishes a short Youtube video of Google Tango tablet with PMD ToF camera inside:

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PR Newswire: Pixart keeps looking for the unusual image-sensor based products. The company's PAH 8001 Heart Rate Monitor integrates a unique CMOS sensor with a LED in a single package. The PAH 8001 uses photoplethysmogram (PPG) technique which passes a green LED light wave into the skin and measures the response change caused by the absorption due to the pulsating arterial blood. The actual measurement is done using a small CMOS Pixel Array and the output data can be used to not only monitor heart rate, but also body stress level, etc.

The Pixart's PAH 8001 is said to be the industry's smallest form factor device with low power consumption. Human trial testing results with the PAH 8001 device closely matches the accuracy obtained using a Medical heart rate measurement system, but packaged in a tiny 3mm x 5mm module and consumes 1.5mA (typ). When used while performing a high impact activity such as running or jogging, the initial testing data shows the accuracy to be within +/-5BPM for speeds up to 8km/h.

"PixArt Imaging is the current market leader in optical mice, but the core technologies (CMOS imaging, optical and system integration) are now enabling the development of new and emerging innovative applications being introduced into the marketplace." said Dennis Lo, President, PixArt Imaging USA. "This heart rate monitor sensor is just the beginning of a line of healthcare monitoring solutions that we will be introducing this year."

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PR Newswire: SoftKinetic and Melexis announce the availability of their first ToF 3D sensor for automobile safety and infotainment markets. The MLX75023 sensor featurs SoftKinetic technology and manufactured in Melexis' automotive-grade CMOS mixed signal process. It's said to work in full sunlight and can be used for natural 3D gesture recognition and robust driver monitoring.

The MLX75023 features include:

• QVGA resolution (320 x 240 pixel)
• DepthSense TOF pixels
• 1/3” sensor format (4.8 x 3.6 mm2)
• High ambient light robustness, up to 120 Klux
• Spectral response range 800-900 nm
• Suitable for LED or laser illumination
• Sensor modulation up to 40 MHz
• Up to 600 fps raw image frame rate
• Small glass BGA package
• Ambient temperature range –40 to +105 degC

"Working together with Melexis we have now been able to create a sensor that is robust in full sunlight, perfect for the automobile environment," said Michel Tombroff, CEO of SoftKinetic. "We are excited about the multitude of possibilities with this sensor, and look forward to the ways car manufacturers will incorporate it into the design of their vehicles' cockpits and beyond."

"Our partnership has allowed us to be the first to provide 3D vision to the automotive safety and infotainment markets, and we are confident that these sensors will enhance life safety and change the way drivers and passengers enjoy the vehicle experience," said Françoise Chombar, CEO at Melexis.

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