Abstract: A video timing generator provides control and timing signals for a variety of different camera types by employing a circular buffer scanned rapidly before the occurrence of each potential control and timing signal. The circular buffer holds operation codes for generating the control and timing signal linked to target event signal times. An operation code having a target event signal time matching with the next event time is decoded and queued to be executed at that event time.

Abstract: An CCD image sensor includes a number of detector sites which are shielded from exposure to light so as to produce an output signal indicative of the dark current from the sensor. The output signal from the sensor is digitized into a series of multi-bit numbers. As dark current picture elements are clocked from the sensor, a logic circuit detects when any one of several least significant bits of the multi-bit digitized sensor output signal has a given logic level. A switch, controlled by the logic circuit, applies a constant current to charge a capacitor so that the voltage across the capacitor will represent the magnitude of the dark current in the sensor output signal. The capacitor voltage is subtracted from the sensor output to provide an image signal in which the effects of the dark current are compensated.

Abstract: An image processor is divided into three sections for image acquisition and storage, image processing, and video output signal generation. The three sections are connected by an addrsss bus, a data bus and a set of control signal lines. A first bus control circuit is provided to isolate the image acquisition and storage section from the other sections during image acquisition and storage operations. A second bus control circuit isolates the video output section from the other sections, except during vertical and horizontal blanking intervals of the video output signal. The image is acquired by a line scan sensor which is clocked to acquire the image over one of several user definable exposure intervals. The video output presents the line scan sensor image in three formats. The first is a compressed representation of the entire line and the second is a less compressed representation of a selected portion of the image. The third display format is a binary version of the second image display format.