Television – Camera – system and detail – Unitary image formed by compiling sub-areas of same scene
Reexamination Certificate
1999-03-19
2004-06-15
Vu, Ngoc-Yen (Department: 2612)
Television
Camera, system and detail
Unitary image formed by compiling sub-areas of same scene
C348S047000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06750904
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF INVENTION
The present invention relates to camera systems including a plurality of image capture devices for achieving three dimensional effects.
BACKGROUND OF INVENTION
Real time, full colour, three-dimensional television has been provided in the past, but no solution has been entirely satisfactory. One solution uses two cameras and two television displays, with the displayed images polarised with their optical plane 90 degrees to each other. The viewer then views the image using polarising glasses so that each eye sees only one screen image. A second solution displays overlapping red and green images via a single display and the viewer wears colour-filter glasses so that each eye sees one image only. The requirement to wear special glasses and their disorientating effect, and the expense of two required displays, have proven unpopular. More recently, immersive television and video applications have included head-mounted displays, but these are similarly disorientating and restrictive for the wearer.
In an article “Time-multiplexed autostereoscopic camera system” by Dodgson et al, University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, Cambridge, UK, a camera system has been described which provides live 3D video input for a time-multiplexed autostereoscopic display (i.e. stereoscopic without special glasses). Multiple input video streams from an array of standard analog video cameras, one for each view direction, are digitised and then time-multiplexed into a single video output stream. The video is then displayed to the user using a field sequential (time-multiplexed) scheme where light emitted from a conventional screen is then directionally modulated so that each field in the sequence is visible only over a narrow view angle in front of the display. Significant processing resources and control circuitry are required for the multiplexing including synchronisation.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,852,787, 3,953,869, 3,960,563 and 4,132,468 disclose generating a stereoscopic (3D-effect) picture from still photographic images by interleaving slices or bands from a number of images (each image being a view of the same scene from a slightly different viewpoint) and using a lenticular screen to view the interleaved image such that each eye of the viewer sees bands from a different one of the images. Images are firstly captured and then image slices are selected and used to generate an interleaved image on a film, for example by projecting onto the film. The lenticular screen may be laminated to the photographic paper which bears the interleaved image slices, with each lenticule aligned with a different lineform image slice. However, the methods and mechanisms for generation of interleaved messages disclosed in these patents are relatively complex, and hence expensive to implement. Furthermore, they are not adapted for real-time processing of live video.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,063,441 discloses an analog stereoscopic video camera enabling image sensor position adjustment to avoid inherent geometric distortions which would otherwise cause vertical parallax. The interocular separation distance is changed to correctly converge the image without distortion. It is stated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,063,441 that the camera could be used to produce interdigitated lenticular stereoscopic displays, if suitable image processing controls are used to process the outputs of the image forming sensors to generate ‘slices’ from the captured images, and then sets of the slices could be juxtaposed behind the lenticules of a lenticular display screen. However, U.S. Pat. No. 5,063,441 does not disclose any method or means for generating the image ‘slices’ or combining them in an interdigitated image, stating that this is “beyond the scope of this disclosure”.
There remains a need for camera systems for producing three-dimensional still images and cameras systems for producing three-dimensional video without the processing overhead of the system described by Dodgson et al, and to provide a solution to the problem of how to generate and to appropriately combine slices or bands of captured two-dimensional images and video frames. There is also a need for a three-dimensional camera which is less complex than currently available cameras and hence is less expensive to produce.
DISCLOSURE OF INVENTION
In a first aspect, the present invention provides a camera system including a plurality of image capture devices and one or more storage arrays, either within the image capture devices or connected thereto for receiving image output information therefrom, wherein the one or more storage arrays have output connections arranged for retrieval of segments of the plurality of images captured by said plurality of image capture devices, the output connections being in an interleaved arrangement such that the segments of the plurality of images are interleaved between each other. A three-dimensional effect can be achieved when the interleaved output image is viewed through a lenticular screen.
The invention thus achieves interleaving of image segments by an arrangement of physical connections, avoiding the need for inclusion of specialist image processing components to achieve this. The invention can be implemented in both still-image cameras and video cameras.
The output comprising interleaved image segments can then be transferred to non-volatile data storage within the camera system (such as flash memory in a digital-output camera system) or to a transmission controller. The stored or transmitted image or video data is then displayed via a lenticular-screen display device. When displayed, each eye of a viewer sees a different set of image segments due to viewing the lenticules of a lenticular screen from a slightly different angle.
Preferably, a camera system according to the invention includes a plurality of lenses each in optical alignment with a respective image capture device comprising an array of photosensitive elements or other image sensor elements. The array of image sensor elements either comprises, or is connected for transfer of information to, an array of cells capable of storing the captured image information. This storage array is preferably a digital storage array having address line and output data line connections enabling data retrieval directly from the cells of the storage array either for transfer to non-volatile storage or for transmission. The arrangement of the physical connections between the elements of the array of image sensors and the output data lines is such that the information output via the output data lines comprises interleaved image segments from the plurality of image capture devices.
In one embodiment, the image sensors are analogue and each image capture device includes its own dedicated digital storage array, with each element of an array of analogue photosensitive elements transferring the information represented by its accumulated charge to a corresponding position in the respective digital storage array via an analogue-to-digital converter.
The arrangement of output connections to achieve interleaving of image segments preferably involves adjacent output data lines (and, in certain embodiments, their corresponding address lines) each being directly connected to a segment (a column or row of cells) of a different one of the plurality of storage arrays.
For example, in a camera system including three lenses and three image sensor arrays, the output connections may be arranged such that information from a first column of a first digital storage array connected to a first sensor array is output adjacent the information from the second column of a second array, then the third column of a third array, then the fourth column of the first array, then the fifth column of the second array, and so on. Note that in this example, the output connections provide a selection of only partial information from each array (e.g. selecting first, fourth, seventh columns, etc from the first array) rather than using all of the available information. This has the practical advantage of enabling conventional image sensor array
Clay A. Bruce
International Business Machines - Corporation
Tillery Rashawn N
Vu Ngoc-Yen
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