ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,363,247, issued on July 15, was assigned to OmniVision Technologies Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.).
"Image sensor having black level correction" was invented by Masao Sambongi (Fremont, Calif.) and Nobuhiro Yanagisawa (San Jose, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An image sensor includes a pixel array including at least one light-shielded area where no light enters and an imaging area where light enters, wherein each pixel includes a photoelectric conversion element, a black level processing unit that corrects an output of each pixel in the imaging area, and a memory that stores a predetermined black level reference for each pixel in the ...