Novel software-based method to widen dynamic range of CCD sensor images

Abstract

In the past twenty years, CCD sensor has made huge progress in improving resolution and low-light performance by hardware. However due to physical limits of the sensor design and fabrication, fill factor has become the bottle neck for improving quantum efficiency of CCD sensor to widen dynamic range of images. In this paper we propose a novel software-based method to widen dynamic range, by virtual increase of fill factor achieved by a resampling process. The CCD images are rearranged to a new grid of virtual pixels com-posed by subpixels. A statistical framework consisting of local learning model and Bayesian inference is used to estimate new subpixel intensity. By knowing the different fill factors, CCD images were obtained. Then new resampled images were computed, and compared to the respective CCD and optical image. The results show that the proposed method is possible to widen significantly the recordable dynamic range of CCD images and increase fill factor to 100 % virtually.