Abstract: An apparatus and method is provided for near real-time, bi-layer segmentation of foreground and background portions of an image using the color and infrared images of the image. The method includes illuminating an object with infrared and visible light to produce infrared and color images of the object. An infrared mask is produced from the infrared image to predict the foreground and background portions of the image. A trimap is produced from the color image to define the color image into three distinct regions. A closed-form natural image matting algorithm is applied to the images to determine the foreground and background portions of the image.

Abstract: A color filter array is provided that includes a mosaic of two new filters that are sensitive only to a narrow band of near infrared light centered around 850 nm. In one embodiment, the color filter array is provided for a two-dimensional CMOS sensor device, the filter array including a filter arrangement of green, blue, green, red, infrared and infrared color filters. A de-mosaicing process can be used to create a full-resolution color image from the image detected by the CMOS sensor through the color filter array.