Colour co-site sampling

Colour co-site sampling is a system of photographic colour sensing, wherein 4, 16 or 36 images are collected from the sensor and merged to form a single image.

This is a viable alternative to the typical Bayer filter array of pixels which returns a lower quality images with interpolated pixel colours.

After the acquisition of each image a piezo mechanism moves the sensor by precisely the distance of one pixel and delivers the complete colour information for each detail and with the same sharpness in all three colour channels.

As only one image is acquired, the missing colour information is determined by the interpolation.

In current cameras sophisticated interpolation algorithms are used to reconstruct the colour information (see filter mosaics, interpolation, and aliasing), so the reduction in the "colour" resolution can turn out to be better than the expected one third.

Chip, taken with a standard one-chip camera (left) and taken with a colour co-site sampling camera.
During the acquisition, the sensor is moved by the distance of one pixel. Thus every pixel is scanned at least once in all three colours.
The colour CCD is moved to 2×2 positions, sampling the colour information of the corresponding pixel at each location of the sensor.