LinX Imaging Announces Array Camera for Mobile Applications

Business Wire: "The image quality of mobile cameras has reached a dead end. Device makers are striving to differentiate using imaging capabilities but the pixel size race has ended and next generation cameras do not reveal any dramatic improvements," says LinX Computational Imaging Ltd.. The company reports that it has successfully developed miniature multi-aperture cameras for mobile devices with nearly half the height of a standard mobile camera and are capable of creating stunning color images and high accuracy depth maps. The engineers at LinX have solved all problems associated with combining multiple images captured from different points in space such as registration errors and occlusion related artifacts which are seen on competing technologies, so that LinX cameras are artifact-free, even when objects appear at very short range.

LinX software also creates a true depth information on high contrast objects and on near flat surfaces, such as walls, which are traditionally considered difficult for passive stereo systems. With its partners, LinX has developed a variety of products ranging from arrays of two, three, and four cameras in various configurations and sizes, some with autofocus and others without. The technology is said to be ready for integration into the current generation mobile devices:

LinX technology is said to have many advantages over traditional mobile photography:

• A larger sensor requires a longer lens. Therefore, by replacing one large sensor with two or more smaller ones, we reduced the height of our device by a factor of 1.4 to 2
• Sensitivity to light increases by a factor of 3 by using a monochrome sensor
• Noise levels are dramatically lower
• The effective array camera resolution is similar to the single aperture camera in high light
• Performance and image quality in low light are extraordinary
• Allowing a fast exposure at indoor standard lighting conditions of 100-200 lux which assures crisp images free from motion blur
• The multi-aperture camera creates a real-time, high-quality distance map

30-page LinX technology presentation shows many comparison pictures with iPhone 5s and Galaxy s4 cameras, many of them in low light: