3D Television Technology

Lenticular Display

Have you ever seen a DVD case that when held at one angle had one image but when held at a different angle has another image? These types of boxes rely on lenticular imaging to acheive this effect. Lenticular imaging relies completely on the idea of parallax in order to allow you to see these two different images. Two separate images will be placed behind what is known as a lenticular lens. This type of lense is designed so that different images will be magnified when they are viewed from a slightly different angle. Lenticular imaging is very popular for making things such as special edition DVDs and other novelty items because two images can be placed on the front cover.

Lenticular imaging can also be used to create three dimensional images. If the lenticular lens is designed so that the picture will change with a small change in angle, it can be made suitable for 3D imaging. Since your eyes are a distance apart, your eyes look at the lens from different angles. If the lens angles used are close to the angles that your eyes view the image at, each eye will see a different image. Through stereopsis, your brain will piece together a three dimensional image from the two separate images.

A pair of eyes are looking through lenticular lenses. The left eye sees light refracted at a different angle than the right eye. This means that the left eye sees a different image (the yellow image) than the right one (which sees the blue image).