Dynamic range expansion

The Stanford Computer Optics Dynamic Range Expansion System enhances the resolution of any image intensified camera system up to 32 bit, independent of the previous A/D conversion.

The data processing is explained by the following diagram:
The black dots give the analog readings at the sampling instances. The blue dots are the corresponding digitized values. Without any additional resolution expansion the resolution is confined to the blue lines that give the available quantization levels for the actual A/D conversion.

The blue line that connects the blue circles give the actual average value after accumulating the number of digitized data samples designated on the abscissa. It can easily be seen, that the frame adding technology used in the dynamic range expansion system severely overcomes the quantization level restrictions from the hardware A/D conversion. In addition, this accmulation technology do not impose additional noise components as is done by interference-prone high-bit A/D conversion electronics.

Our dynamic range expansion system provides a fully 32 bit data processing and image editing software.
This allows for frame adding with up to 2¹⁶ 16 bit data words without any loss of accuracy.

The resolution gain obtained from the frame accumulation process is given by
res. gain = number of added data samples
or
res. gain [bits] = log2 (number of added data samples).