A television scanning scheme for a detector-noise-limited system

The signal-to-noise ratio at a single-element detector scanning a television picture can be improved if the detector receives light from many picture elements simultaneously. This paper describes a scanning reticle, with transparent and opaque elements chosen according to a binary biorthogonal sequence, that will provide an exact reproduction in the same scanning time as a reticle scanning only one element at a time. For general pictures, the proposed system will require greater bandwidth, but for pictures consisting of only a few bright spots, the bandwidth can actually be compressed. This system provides a "quick look" picture in less than the usual scanning time, which is of particularly good fidelity if the original picture contains only a few bright spots.