Near-sensor image processing: a new paradigm

The paper introduces the concept of near-sensor image processing. By this, the authors mean techniques in which the physical properties of the image sensor itself is utilized to do part of the signal processing task. It is shown that the analog-temporal behavior of photodiodes combined with thresholding amplifiers can be used favorably to do certain low-level image processing tasks including median filtering and convolution. The given examples also show how adaptivity to different light levels can be achieved in a natural way. To extract features from the image, such as moments and shape factors, the authors introduce a simple measurement function.