The Eye

Jerome (freeman@well.com)
Mon, 26 Jan 1998 11:07:36 -0800


The technique of enhancing resolution beyond the acuity of individual
receptors is already in use in at least one tethered digital camera.
Quoting from their FAQ:

How does the Pixera Camera achieve a one-million-pixel resolution from a
1/3" CCD?

Pixera camera achieves the one-million pixel resolution
through its innovative optical image capture
mechanism. The Pixera camera captures four frames of
the image and overlays them, increasing the resolution
of the image to four times the resolution of the CCD
chip (250,000 pixels).

from http://www.pixera.com/wwwroot3/FAQ.htm

John K Clark wrote:

>Anders Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se> On 25 Jan 1998 Wrote:
>
> >According to my office-mate Mikael, the acuity of the fovea is

> >apparently higher than expected just by seeing each receptor cell
as
> >a 'pixel', it is smaller than their receptice fields! (I don't
know
> >how it is done).
>
>
>I can think of one way. If an on-off photo receptor has a field of view
>X degrees wide and you want to know where a star is to better accuracy
than X,
>then turn your receptor 1/2 X degrees to the right, if you still register a
>pixel then the star must have been in the right half of the original field
of
>view, if not then it was in the left.
>
>If we couldn't move our eyes but had to move our entire head I think we'd
end
>up with some very tired and sore neck muscles or we'd be virtually blind.
>