Open Discussion on ADVIS Technology

An interesing discussion on ADVIS is ongoing in dpreview.com forums. Mark Bocko, the founder of ADVIS, responds to Eric Fossum comments (link):

"I am the idiot (or possibly the Charlatan) to whom this comment was directed.

We never claimed to be be able to average out photon shot noise, I do not know where this came from. Any comments we have ever made about averaging out shot noise pertained to leakage current related shot noise, which most of the time is not the limiting factor anyway. I don't know how this became an issue but since it was brought up here's the explanation.

The photodiode integrates current, thus successive samples (in time) of the random charge on the photodiode are correlated and can not be averaged together to reduce the noise. However by resetting the PD periodically one destroys this correlation and the decorrelated samples may be averaged to reduce the noise. This all becomes a tradoff between the reset noise and the leakage current related shot noise."

Eric Fossum replies:

"So, given that you can't tell the difference if electrons collected by the PD are from leakage (Aka dark current) or photon generation, and given that shot noise is shot noise, how exactly will you average out the dark current shot noise if you agree you cannot average out photon shot noise?"

So far Eric's position looks much more logical to me.

Update Apr. 13, 2006: The thread has mysteriously disappeared from dpreview.com forums. As of today, the thread traces are still kept in Google cache, but not for long, probably.

Update Apr. 14, 2006: Eric Fossum posted his remarks about behind-the-scene history:

"So, not so long ago there was a thread on the press release by Advis-inc (www.advis-inc.com) about their new (proposed) sensor technology.

The thread disappeared. Was it yanked for some reason? A search for "advis" yields an error.

I posted a series of comments on this technology. The principal subsequently contacted me privately with comments on my comments. I advis-ed him to post them directly himself but I don't think he ever did, and instead the thread is gone gone gone.
I am new enough to DPreview to not know if this is common or rare.
Any ideas?

I would like to post his comments and my comments on his comments, if anyone is still interested in this image sensor technology...
-Eric"