ABSTRACT
Image sensors play an important role both in everyday life and in highly specialized tasks. High-speed machine vision task used in industrial plants for food grain separation based on the grain size is an example where high-speed imagers with possible in-pixel processing are appropriate. Currently, CMOS technology has an advantage over the charged-coupled device process in image sensor implementation due to the fact that it is possible to integrate active circuits in the pixel structure. This chapter mainly focuses on CMOS image sensors. It discusses some of the important image sensors that are currently being incorporated in practical applications. The chapter explains the main trends in CMOS imager design and focuses on digital image sensors and different approaches in digital imagers. It presents image sensors with basic machine vision processing power and introduces some of the image sensors with specialized functions.
