Samsung Patents Modified Light Field Sensor with Monochrome Sub-Images

In order to record colour images, camera sensors typically use a colour filter array consisting of red, green, and blue filters on top of the light-intensity sensing sub-pixels. After recording each sub-pixel’s light intensity, the so-called “demosaic” process combines four monochrome sub-pixels (2x red, 2x green, 1x blue) into a single pixel containing RGB colour information.
In microlens-based light field cameras, this “demosaic” job may result in a blur effect around the boundaries of objects in the final image.
Image Sensors World found a patent application by Samsung which can solve this blur-problem: In the patent application entitled “Photographing device and photographing method for taking picture by using a plurality of microlenses”, authors Tae-Hee Lee et al. propose moving the colour filter in front of the microlenses (instead of having them behind the microlenses), creating single-colour sub-images.

Restoring colour-information after the pixel-matching process can help prevent the loss of resolution through demosaicing.

More information: Patent US20140204183 – Photographing device and photographing method for taking picture by using a plurality of microlenses

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