What is an Image Sensor?

• An Image Sensor is a photosensitive device that converts light signals into digital signals
(colours). It uses film to capture and store an image.

• Image sensors contain millions of photosensitive diodes known as photosites.

• When you take a picture, the camera's shutter opens briefly and each photo site on the
image sensor records the brightness of the light that falls on it by accumulating photons.
The more light that hits a photo site, the more photons it records.
• The brightness recorded by each photosite is then stored as a set of numbers (digital
numbers) that can then be used to set the color and brightness of a single pixel on the
screen or ink on the printed page to reconstruct the image.

An image sensor is typically of two types:

1. Charged Coupled Device (CCD)

2. Complementary Metal Oxide

Semiconductor (CMOS)
 What is CCD?
• Charge-coupled devices (CCDs) are silicon-based integrated
circuits consisting of a dense matrix of photodiodes that
operate by converting light energy in the form of photons into
an electronic charge.

• Electrons generated by the interaction of photons with silicon

atoms are stored in a potential well and can subsequently be
transferred across the chip through registers and output to an
amplifier.
 What is CMOS?
• “CMOS" refers to both a particular style of digital circuitry design, and the
family of processes used to implement that circuitry on integrated circuits
(chips).

• CMOS circuitry dissipates less power when static, and is denser than other
implementations having the same functionality.

• CMOS circuits use a combination of p-type and n-type metal–oxide–

semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) to implement logic gates and
other digital circuits found in computers, telecommunications equipment, and
signal processing equipment.
 CCD vs CMOS
• CMOS image sensors can incorporate other circuits on the same chip, eliminating
the many separate chips required for a CCD.

• This also allows additional on-chip features to be added at little extra cost. These
features include image stabilization and image compression.

• Not only does this make the camera smaller, lighter, and cheaper; it also requires
less power so batteries last longer.
• CMOS image sensors can switch modes on the fly between still photography and
video.

• CMOS sensors excel in the capture of outdoor pictures on sunny days, they suffer
in low light conditions.

• Their sensitivity to light is decreased because part of each photosite is covered

with circuitry that filters out noise and performs other functions.

• The percentage of a pixel devoted to collecting light is called the pixel’s fill factor.
CCDs have a 100% fill factor but CMOS cameras have much less.