Wide dynamic range imaging by sensitivity adjustable CMOS image sensor

In this paper, we propose the wide dynamic range imaging system by using the sensitivity adjustable CMOS image sensor. This method is effective to capture a scene that has both the very bright area and the dark area at the same time. Proposed sensor has the adjustable sensitivity pixels and the sensitivity is changed by switching the extra capacitor in each pixel circuit. We designed and implemented the 200 /spl times/ 200 pixels of the prototype VLSI chip. Verification result shows the sensitivity changes 6 dB of range. We also made the wide dynamic range image capture system with this prototype and observed the appropriate output of the image sensor.