A 4 K x 2 K-pixel color image pickup system

We have developed an experimental 4 K x 2 K pixel progressive scan color ca mera system. This new camera system has a data rate of 297 MHz pixel/sec an d 60 frame/sec and we are sure that horizontal and vertical limiting resolu tion of 1500 TVL (TV lines) can be achieved on a color monitor. Instead of the previous approach of improving resolution simply by increasing the pixe l count in a imager, a novel four-sensor pickup method with 2/3 inch 2 mill ion pixel CMD (Charge Modulation Device) imagers is used in this system. Th ese sensors have 1920 (I-I) x 1035 (V) pixels within a 16:9 wide aspect ima ge area and are successfully driven at 148 M pixel/sec in the progressive s can mode. In the four-sensor pickup method, two sensors are used for green and the rest are for red and blue. A spatial offset imaging method in the d iagonal direction was applied Do the two green sensors to improve the horiz ontal and vertical resolution effectively. The horizontal and vertical reso lution of the red and blue signals become half that of the green signal, be cause only one 2 hi-pixel imager is used for each signal. The resolution of this system, however, is not degraded so much because the luminance signal is mainly composed of green signals.