3D Visual Communications

3.2 Stereoscopic Display

The general framework of stereoscopic display consists of two components: a multiplexing process to encode the stereo image pair at the display side, and a de-multiplexing process to retrieve the left and right view at the viewer side. To conduct the de-multiplexing, the viewers are required to wear special glasses. In the following, we discuss different multiplexing methods used in the stereoscopic display.

3.2.1 Wavelength Division (Color) Multiplexing

The color reproduction mechanism described in classic color theory provides a method to deliver the left and right image by separating the visible spectrum (370–730 nm) into two different wavelength bands. The most common approach for wavelength division multiplexing is to multiplex the higher spectral band (red) of the left image and the lower spectral band (blue/cyan) of the right image in the display side; and the viewers can de-multiplex the signal by wearing anaglyph glasses whose left and right glass can filter different spectral information such that each eye perceives its corresponding color. Anaglyph is the least costly method of displaying 3D images wherever the device can comprise primary colors, that is paper, film, CRT/LCD. A common and simple way to generate an anaglyph image is to take the linear combination of color information from left and right image: Let the red, green, and blue information (codeword stored in image file) of one given pixel located at coordinate (x,y) in the left image ...