US Patent 7375665 Image processing method and analog front end circuit

An image processing system includes a charge-coupled device sensor having a wide input dynamic range, and an analog front end circuit coupled to the charge-coupled device sensor. The front end circuit includes an analog-to-digital converter module to receive an input analog signal from the charge-coupled device sensor, the analog-to-digital converter module having a signal to noise ratio corresponding to a predetermined number of bits and a higher resolution than the predetermined number of bits. The front end circuit further includes a digital multiplier module coupled to the analog-to-digital converter module, the analog-to-digital converter module and the digital multiplier module to adjust a full scale input range at the analog-to-digital converter module over the wide range without loss in analog-to-digital conversion resolution.