An electronic-calibration scheme for logarithmic CMOS pixels

Logarithmic cameras have the wide dynamic range required to image natural scenes and encode the important contrast information within the scene. However, the images from these cameras are severely degraded by a fixed pattern noise (FPN). Previous attempts to improve the quality of the images from these cameras by removing an additive FPN have led to disappointing results. Using an existing model for the response of logarithmic pixels, it is concluded that the residual FPN in these images is caused by gain variations between pixels. In order to reduce the effects of these variations, a readout circuit, which is based upon a differential amplifier, has been used. However, even with this readout circuit, high-quality images will only be obtained if each image is corrected to remove the effects of both gain and offset variations. Measurement results are presented that show that the quality of the output from the logarithmic pixels is significantly improved if an electronic-calibration procedure is used to correct for both types of variations. In fact, with this procedure, the contrast sensitivity of the logarithmic pixels becomes comparable to that of the human eye over five decades of illumination intensity.