Sony and Stanford University Develop Compressive Sensing Imager

IEEE Spectrum: Oike from Sony and Stanford University Prof. El Gamal design a compressive image sensor. 256- by 256-pixel image sensor contains associated electronics that can sum random combinations of analog pixel values as it’s making its A-to-D conversions. The digital output of this chip is thus already in compressed form. Depending on how it’s configured, the chip can slash energy consumption by as much as a factor of 15.

The chip is not the first to perform random-pixel summing electronically, but it is the first to capture many different random combinations simultaneously, doing away with the need to take multiple images for each compressed frame. This is a significant accomplishment, according to other experts. "It’s a clever implementation of the compressed-sensing idea," says Richard Baraniuk, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University, in Houston, and a cofounder of InView Technology.