Today at the Embedded Vision Alliance meeting, Almalence has announced SuperSensor, a groundbreaking technology for integrated camera quality improvement without hardware modifications.
During the last few years mobile handset makers have been struggling to deliver the best image quality and advanced camera features. The camera has nearly become the number one feature of a mobile phone and the main thing that makes a difference for users. While the mobile camera quality seems to have nearly achieved its physical limitations, Almalence’s new technology is designed to give this a leap beyond confines.
Top: the font is too small, the illumination is too low and dynamic range is too high to capture the pictures.
Bottom: same scenes, same conditions, same camera, but with SuperSensor technology.
“Mobile handset makers always come to a point where camera quality improvement is impossible due to size restrictions or the cost, usually both”, says Eugene Panich, CEO of Almalence. “Using a computational component such as SuperSensor is a way to improve mobile camera features without adding a micron to its size and at just a small fraction of the cost of typical hardware improvement. While hardware improvements can take years to utilize, the time to market for a computational component could be as short as days, and you can even put it into the devices that are already sold via a system upgrade.”
Unlike other imaging solutions, each of which improves some specific property such as dynamic range or noise level only, SuperSensor provides complex improvements. Its effect is similar to replacing a 1/4” sensor with a 1/3” sensor containing more pixels, which results in higher resolution, lower noise, higher speed, and wider dynamic range altogether.
A demo of SuperSensor in a form of Android app for Nexus 5 is publicly available on Google Play. The first devices which utilize the Almalence SuperSensor technology are expected to be available on the market in 2015.
Further information, examples and demo can be found at: almalence.com/doc/super-sensor-demo
About Almalence
Almalence develops computational photography methods and imaging technologies that improve imaging quality and make advanced photography features available. Whether it is a mobile camera or a hi-end DSLR, a microscope or a satellite imaging system, Almalence’s solutions enable the improvement of basic image quality parameters such as resolution, low light performance, and dynamic range beyond the cameras’ physical limits. Almalence is a mobile imaging solutions provider for top mobile handset OEMs, a maker of the world’s best and unique desktop super resolution software and end-user mobile camera applications.