US Patent Issued to Canon on Jan. 20 for "Photoelectric conversion apparatus having avalanche photodiode" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 20 -- United States Patent no. 12,532,556, issued on Jan. 20, was assigned to Canon K.K. (Tokyo).

"Photoelectric conversion apparatus having avalanche photodiode" was invented by Keisuke Ito (Kanagawa, Japan), Yasuharu Ota (Tokyo) and Masahiro Kobayashi (Tokyo).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A photoelectric conversion apparatus includes a pixel area including a plurality of pixels each including an avalanche photodiode including an anode and a cathode. The plurality of pixels includes effective pixels that output a photon detection signal responsive to photo detection, dummy pixels that do not output the photon detection signal, and optical black pixels including a light ...