Super-resolution approach to overcome physical limitations of imaging sensors: An overview

Although the performance of CCD and CMOS imaging sensors has improved since their invention, they still have several physical limitations, such as various sources of noise, limited dynamic range, and limited spatial resolution. Besides these physical limitations, they have malfunctioning problems, such as smearing and blooming, which degrade the quality of captured images. These limitations and malfunctioning problems can be overcome, based on device physics and circuit technology. However, a signal-processing-based approach is a good alternative solution to these problems, because it may cost less and existing imaging systems can be still utilized. In a broad sense, this signal-processing-based approach can be called a super-resolution approach. The goal of this article is to introduce a super-resolution approach that overcomes the limitations of imaging sensors. To this purpose, we describe the existing limitations of imaging sensors first, and then describe the corresponding super-resolution approach.