CP-lecture07-Noise

Outline

• Sensor noise.
• Noise calibration.
• Optimal weights for HDR

Sensor Noise

Note: we will only consider per-pixel noise. We won’t consider cross-pixel effects such as blooming , smearing, cross-talk…

Where does the noise come from

Poisson distribution

• discrete
• single parameter $\lambda$
• function:
  $$N\sim Poisson(\lambda )⟺P(N=k;\lambda )=\frac{{\lambda }^k{e}^{-\lambda }}{k!}$$
• mean: $\mu (N)=\lambda$
• variance: $\sigma (N{)}^2=\lambda$
• $N_1\sim Poisson({\lambda }_1),N_2\sim Poisson({\lambda }_2)\Rightarrow N_1+N_2\sim Poisson({\lambda }_1+{\lambda }_2)$

Photon Noise

A consequence of the discrete (quantum) nature of light. (将光视为光粒子的概率分布)

• Photon detections are independent random events.
• Total number of detections is Poisson distributed.
• Also known as shot noise and Schott noise.、
  Depends on scene flux and exposure

Dark Noise

• Electrons(dark current) are randomly released without any photons.
• Total number of detections is Poisson distributed.
• Increases exponentially with sensor temperature (+6°C ≈ doubling) $\to$ cool the sensor to mitigate it
  Depends on exposure but not on scene

Read and ADC Noise (Additive Noise)

A consequence of random voltage fluctuations before and after amplifier.

• Both are independent of scene and exposure.
• Both are normally (zero-mean Guassian) distributed.
• ADC noise includes quantization errors.

Summary

noises

Noise	Distrbution	Gain	Dependence
Photon Noise	$\sim \text{Poisson}[t\alpha \Phi ]$	$\cdot g$	scene, exposure, ISO
Dark Noise	$\sim \text{Poisson}[tD]$	$\cdot g$	temperature, exposure, ISO
Read Noise	$\sim \text{Normal}(0,{\sigma }_{\text{read}})$	$\cdot g$	ISO
ADC Noise	$\sim \text{Normal}(0,{\sigma }_{\text{ADC}})$

Affine noise model

$$\begin{array}{rl}& L=N_{\text{photon}}+N_{\text{dark}}\sim \text{Poisson}(t(\alpha \Phi +D))\\ & N_{\text{add}}=g{N}_{\text{read}}+N_{\text{ADC}}\sim \text{Normal}\left(0,\sqrt{g^2{\sigma }_{\text{read}}^2+{\sigma }_{\text{ADC}}^2}\right)\\ ⟹& I=gL+N_{\text{add}}\\ & E(I)=t(a\Phi +D)g\\ & \sigma (I{)}^2=t(a\Phi +D)g^2+{\sigma }_{\text{read}}^2{g}^2+{\sigma }_{\text{ADC}}^2\end{array}$$

noise regimes

Regime	Dominant Noise	Notes
bright pixels	photon noise	scene-dependent
dark pixels	read and ADC noise	scene-independent
high ISO	photon and read noise	pre-gain
low ISO	ADC noise	post-gain
long exposures	dark noise	thermal-dependent

Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)

Variance is an absolute measure of the (squared) magnitude of noise:
$$\sigma (I{)}^2=E\left({\left(I-E(I)\right)}^2\right)=E(I^2)-E(I{)}^2$$

SNR is a relative measure of the (inverse squared) magnitude of noise:

$$\text{SNR}=\frac{E(I{)}^2}{\sigma (I{)}^2}$$

Noise calibration

Estimate the dark current $D$

capture multiple images with the sensor completely blocked and average to form the dark frame

Estimate the gain and additive noise variance

Optimal weights for HDR merging

to be continued

reference:

• CMU 15-463: lecture 07 noise
• CSDN blog: 计算摄影：噪声模型与噪声估计