Hardware and software platform for analog sensor processing using exposure control

Analog Sensor Processing Using Exposure Control (ASPEC) is a new concept for high speed image processing. By using an addressable image array with integrating output amplifiers, single processing can be performed directly on the sensors. The major gain in using ASPEC techniques is that the operations are fast, the approach can be implemented using existing hardware, and that the processing is executed in parallel on the sensor array. Furthermore, the data reduction is carried out early in the signal processing chain. In this paper we present a novel programmable camera architecture based on the CIVIS CMOS integrating addressable image sensor which is well suited for ASPEC applications.