Opto-electronic video compression system

Abstract

An opto-electronic video compression system is disclosed including a lens element for transmitting light of an image and having one or more lenses, each lens having a predetermined focal length. A sensor array includes a first sensor for receiving focused light from the lens element and a second sensor for receiving defocused light from the lens element, wherein the first sensor includes X×Y pixels and samples the focused light at each of the X×Y pixels, and the second sensor includes X/2×Y/2 pixels and samples the defocused light at each of the X/2×Y/2 pixels. An electronic differencing element in communication with the first and second sensor is also included for differencing the coefficients of co-located pixels.

What is claimed is:  
     
         1 . An opto-electronic video compression system, comprising: 
 a lens element for transmitting light of an image and having one or more lenses, each lens having a predetermined focal length;    a sensor array including a first sensor for receiving focused light from the lens element and a second sensor for receiving defocused light from the lens element, wherein the first sensor includes X×Y pixels and samples the focused light at each of the X×Y pixels, and the second sensor includes X/2×Y/2 pixels and samples the defocused light at each of the X/2×Y/2 pixels; and    an electronic differencing element in communication with the first and second sensor for differencing the coefficients of co-located pixels.    
     
     
         2 . The opto-electronic video compression system of  claim 1 , wherein the lens element includes a single lens, and further including a beam splitter between the lens element and the sensor array for transmitting a first percentage of the light from the image to the first sensor and a second percentage of the light from the image to the second sensor.  
     
     
         3 . The opto-electronic video compression system of  claim 1 , wherein the lens element includes a single collimated lens, further including a beam splitter between the lens element and the sensor array for transmitting a first percentage of the light from the image to the first sensor and a second percentage of the light from the image to the second sensor, and further including a first lens between the beam splitter and the first sensor for providing the focused light on the first sensor, and a second lens between the beam splitter and the second sensor for providing the defocused light on the second sensor.  
     
     
         4 . The opto-electronic video compression system of  claim 1 , wherein the sensor array is a stepped array.  
     
     
         5 . The opto-electronic video compression system of  claim 1 , further including an electronic quantizing element in communication with the electronic differencing element for dividing coefficients received from the electronic differencing element by a predetermined quantizer coefficient.  
     
     
         6 . The opto-electronic video compression system of  claim 1 , wherein the lens element includes multiple lenses.  
     
     
         7 . The opto-electronic video compression system of  claim 6 , wherein each lens has the same focal length and the sensor is a stepped sensor.  
     
     
         8 . The opto-electronic video compression system of  claim 6 , wherein each lens has different focal lengths and the sensor is a planer sensor.  
     
     
         9 . The opto-electronic video compression system of  claim 1 , further including an electronic quantizing element in communication with the electronic differencing element for dividing coefficients received from the electronic differencing element by a predetermined quantizer coefficient.  
     
     
         10 . The opto-electronic video compression system of  claim 9 , wherein the quantizer coefficient is programmable.  
     
     
         11 . The opto-electronic video compression system of  claim 9 , wherein the electronic quantizing element is a programmable attenuation circuit.  
     
     
         12 . The opto-electronic video compression system of  claim 9 , further including a model in communication with the electronic quantizing element and a second electronic differencing element in communication with the electronic quantizing element and the model for calculating the difference between a coefficient and a co-located coefficient from the model.