University of California

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

James E Davis

Ramesh Raskar

Jing Liu

Ahmed Kirmani

Our inventive method enables stereoscopic 3D displays to be watched by 3D and 2D viewers simultaneously. Ghosted images observed on traditional 3D displays can be eliminated for viewers without stereoscopic glasses while 3D perception is preserved for viewers with glasses. A preferred method for displaying an image on a 3D+2D television comprises displaying a composite image ('L+wN'), comprising a left ('L') image and a weighted image (&#x201c;wN&#x201d;), for a first period of time; and displaying a right (&#x201c;R&#x201d;) image for a second period of time. The display of &#x201c;wN&#x201d; partially cancels out the perception of &#x201c;R&#x201d; to mitigate ghosting for viewers not wearing 3D eyeglasses. In the illustrative embodiment, &#x201c;wN&#x201d; is a weighted negative version of &#x201c;R&#x201d;.

Practical two-frame 3D+2D TV

In illustrative implementations of this invention, multi-path analysis of transient illumination is used to reconstruct scene geometry, even of objects that are occluded from the camera. An ultrafast camera system is used. It comprises a photo-sensor (e.g., accurate in the picosecond range), a pulsed illumination source (e.g. a femtosecond laser) and a processor. The camera emits a very brief light pulse that strikes a surface and bounces. Depending on the path taken, part of the light may return to the camera after one, two, three or more bounces. The photo-sensor captures the returning light bounces in a three-dimensional time image I(x,y,t) for each pixel. The camera takes different angular samples from the same viewpoint, recording a five-dimensional STIR (Space Time Impulse Response). A processor analyzes onset information in the STIR to estimate pairwise distances between patches in the scene, and then employs isometric embedding to estimate patch coordinates.

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Los Gatos, CA, United States of America

James E Davis