ISSCC 2006 Circuit Design Forum 4 - Color Imaging

San Francisco, Feb. 9, 2006

Color Imaging

Objective

Color Imaging is a very interesting topic, because the signals that are delivered by the image sensor or the imaging system are not colored at all. Color imaging very much relies on all kinds of signal processing tricks and optimizations. On the other hand silicon chips react in a complete different way to color signals than the human visual system. That makes color imaging quite complex and difficult ! To contribute to a better understanding of the color issues and to stimulate creativity in this field, the ISSCC Subcommittee on IMMD is organizing a forum around this theme.

Audience

Target participants are engineers and managers involved in the development of image sensors and camera systems making use of these devices. Such individuals need to understand the functionalities required in color imaging, and how their requirements can be met in future designs.

Scope

The speakers at the forum are world experts. They are invited to present up-to-date material on various topics in color imaging. The talks are intended to address the material in all its technical details.

Program

In the first presentation by Brian Wandell (Stanford University), the human visual system will be discussed. Certain aspects of color are quantitatively summarized in standard color spaces, and the experimental and biological basis for these color spaces will be explained. The second presentation by Tetsuya Kuno (Mitsubishi) will provide an overview of the color imaging systems and will discuss which is the best sensor to produce beautiful images.

The third presentation by Katsumi Yamamoto (Toppan SMIC) will concentrate on the color filter technology. Important characteristics in filter technology are high integration, overlay, making of the thin film, high sensitivity and external issues (transport, storage, ...). The fourth presentation by Gennady Agranov (Micron) and the fifith by Takashi Saito (Kanagawa University) concentrate on the digital processing of the color signals : color matrixing and demosaicing. The quality of the image obtained with a color camera is depending heavily on the quality of the algorithms during the matrixing operation and the demosaicing operation. Both papers will give an overview of state-of-the-art work in these fields.

It is a property of the human visual system to reduce the effect of the illumination when looking at a scene. This property, known as Color Constancy, is such that a white object is perceived as white independently of the color of the light source. Automatic White Balance (AWB) algorithms aim at providing the image capture device as well with the Color Constancy functionality, and this is the subject of the sixth presentation by Massimo Mancuso (ST Microelectronics).

The last presentation by Charles Poynton will concentrate on color coding. Digital camera systems obviously deliver digital image data, however, there is a wide variety of digital image standards to which that data can be encoded. In this talk, the technical parameters of digital image exchange standards will be reviewed. At the end of the afternoon, all speakers will assemble in a panel format for an open discussion with the audience on the challenges in all aspects of color imaging.

(This page was excerpted from page 84 of a PDF document at ISSCC's site.)

Charles Poynton - Courses & seminars
2006-04-08