Television – Camera – system and detail – Optics
Reexamination Certificate
1997-06-24
2001-07-03
Ho, Tuan (Department: 2612)
Television
Camera, system and detail
Optics
C348S218100, C348S219100, C348S222100
Reexamination Certificate
active
06256066
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a method for picking up an image with high-resolution, and apparatus therefor. More specifically, the invention relates to a high-resolution image pickup method and apparatus therefor for enhancing the resolution of image pickup systems which are used for automatically deciding the conformity of inspection results in the production line with respect to inspections for point defects and the like on display devices used in electronic equipment and other fields, such as liquid crystal panels, shadow masks, CRT panels and plasma displays.
As a method for reading the screen displayed on a display device, there has been provided, as a primary method, one using a CCW area sensor, which is a two-dimensional sensor.
In this method, pixels arrayed in columns and rows of two-dimensional sensors and pixels arrayed in columns and rows of a display device are associated with each other (hereinafter, unless otherwise specified, pixels of the display device will be referred to as “display pixels”, and pixels of the sensors will be referred to as “sensor pixels”), where the pixel arrangement is generally such that a plurality of sensor pixels are associated with one display pixel.
This is explained by taking a case of a display device of 3000×1000 pixels of a liquid crystal panel as an example. A liquid crystal panel includes display portions and non-display portions of the pixels. Point defects in the lighting inspection for these display portions can be classified into dark dots, which are a group of display pixels that will not make display in the displaying state of the liquid crystal panel, and bright dots, which are a group of display pixels that will make display in the non-display state. For an automatic inspection apparatus for inspecting these point defects, it is required to determine the correct positions of these point defects in the display device. In this case, when two sensor pixels are assigned to one display pixel, approximately 6000 pixels are required in the row direction.
However, it is not easy to increase the sensor pixels to meet the increasingly growing requirement of high-density pixels of liquid crystal panels. This is due to increases in the probability of defects of the sensor pixels themselves in the semiconductor manufacturing process, which is caused by the increase in the number of sensor pixels. For this reason, it would be the case to use a CCW area sensor with a low number of sensor pixels, where even such a method could not allow the required automatic inspection apparatus to be implemented. As the method of using a CCW area sensor with a low number of sensor pixels, there have conventionally been available a method of using a plurality of CCD area sensors in the first place, and a method of moving the relative positions of the CCD area sensor and the inspection subject in very small steps (for example, see a paper “Automatic Inspection Technique for LCD Display Image Quality” in the journal, “Monthly LCD Intelligence”, issued March 1996, pp. 66-75).
However, the aforementioned two conventional methods have had the following issues.
First, in the first method of using a plurality of CCD area sensors, it would be difficult to align the image pickup optical systems of the inspection apparatus, and besides it would become complicated to treat the overlapped portions of image pickup portions of display pixels, which are the inspection subject, of each other image pickup sensors. Thus, this is not a method that will not desirably be employed. Also, when the CCD area sensor is very expensive, using a plurality of CCD area sensors would result in a very high-price image pickup system on the whole.
In the second method of moving the relative positions of the CCD area sensor and the inspection subject in very small steps, since the number of pixels of the CCD area sensor is not increased, it could not be expected to greatly improve the resolution. For example, there may be a case where the number of display pixels would be increased, resulting in such a setting of magnification that display pixels
51
are small relative to sensor pixels
50
as shown in
FIG. 7
, where the display pixels are assigned to the sensor pixels. This is a case where the image pickup sensors count 1000 pixels in the row direction, while the display pixels count 2000 pixels in the row direction. In this case, even if the relative positions of the CCD area sensor and the inspection subject are moved in very small steps, it would be impossible to obtain information unique to the display pixels because only one image pickup sensor is assigned to two display pixels.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The object of the present invention is to provide a high-resolution image pickup method and apparatus therefor which can solve the foregoing issues and which can easily realize high resolution.
In accomplishing these and other aspects, according to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a high-resolution image pickup method comprising: dividing each of a plurality of light-receiving pixels of an image pickup sensor for capturing image information on an inspection subject into a plurality of regions; and capturing the image information from the inspection subject for each of the divided regions, thereby finally capturing image information on the inspection subject with all the regions of the light-receiving pixels.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a high-resolution image pickup method according to the first aspect, wherein in capturing the image information, by providing light-receiving pixel region dividing parts between the inspection subject and the image pickup sensor, each of the light-receiving pixel region dividing parts being placed in correspondence to each light-receiving pixel of the image pickup sensor and being smaller in area than one of the light-receiving pixels, only light that has passed the light-receiving pixel region dividing part out of light derived from the inspection subject is captured by the light-receiving pixel of the image pickup sensor as image information.
According to a third aspect of the present invention, there is provided a high-resolution image pickup apparatus comprising: an image pickup sensor having a plurality of light-receiving pixels for capturing image information on an inspection subject; a light-receiving pixel region dividing member having light-receiving pixel region dividing parts, the member-being placed between the image pickup sensor and the inspection subject, moreover each of the light-receiving pixel region dividing parts being placed in correspondence to each light-receiving pixel of the image pickup sensor and being smaller in area than one of the light-receiving pixels, wherein only light that has passed the light-receiving pixel region dividing part out of light derived from the inspection subject is captured by the light-receiving pixel of the image pickup sensor as image information.
According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a high-resolution image pickup apparatus according to the third aspect, wherein the light-receiving pixel region dividing member is a plate member having a light-shielding function, and each of the light-receiving pixel region dividing parts is an aperture of the plate member.
According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a high-resolution image pickup apparatus according to the third or fourth aspect, wherein each of the light-receiving pixel region dividing parts is sized to be one half that of each light-receiving pixel of the image pickup sensor in horizontal and vertical directions each, and image information on the inspection subject is captured to the image pickup sensor in units of a quarter of each light-receiving pixel of the image pickup sensor.
According to a sixth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a high-resolution image pickup apparatus according to any of the third to fifth aspects, wherein the light-receiving pixe
Nomura Tsuyoshi
Shimono Ken
Ueda Hideshi
Yukawa Noriaki
Ho Tuan
Matsushita Electric - Industrial Co., Ltd.
Wenderoth , Lind & Ponack, L.L.P.
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