Appeal No. 2004-1543 Page 5
Application No. 09/303,991
Figure 8 of Cox shows an ultra-high-resolution multicamera device 41 having a
plurality of tapered fiber-optic bundles 15 which have a machined or fused joint 42
therebetween in order to form a continuous image surface. The multicamera device 41
includes solid-state cameras 45 which are connected to receive the images input to the
tapered fiber-optic bundles 15 and directed to the image sensor module 17. Cox
teaches (column 3, lines 28) that the image sensor module 17 is typically a solid-state
discrete element electro-optical scanner of the CCD, CID or MOS type, but may also be
a conventional television camera tube. The video images received by the cameras 45
are transmitted via cable 46 to a scan converter 40 so that the video images can be
spliced together to create an output which corresponds to a composite image 30 (see
Figure 5b).
Figure 9 of Cox is a block diagram of the multicamera device 41 with the scan
converter 40. The scan converter 40 includes an analog section 60, an A/D section 62,
a timing section 64, a frame buffer section 66, and finally a video out section 68. Cox
discloses (column 5, line 60, to column 8, line 6) the operation of the multicamera
device 41 as follows:
The image sensor modules 17 detect the bundle sub-images 16 and
analog video signals are output via cables 46 to a buffer and clamp circuit 72 in
the analog section 60. The analog video signals are synchronized to a system
pixel clock 69 and clamped to a reference voltage before being output to an
analog-to-digital (A/D) converter 76 in the A/D section 62, which converts the
analog signals to digital video data. This digital video data is temporarily stored in
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007