Volume 9, Number 6 • November/December 2001 • Small Business/SBIR

Three-Dimensional Displays Available

Dimension Technologies Inc. (DTI) is the world’s only manufacturer of commercially available two-dimensional/three-dimensional (2D/3D) switchable Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD) and owns many of the world’s major patents on the technology. These unique 15- and 18.1-inch flat panel displays are in use around the world in hundreds of design, research, medical imaging, education and industrial applications.

A computer monitor capable of both two- and three-dimensional display. Three-dimensional displays are potentially useful in telemedicine and surgical simulators, among other applications. Photo provided by Glenn Research Center.

Current users include Goodyear, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed, Alias/Wavefront, Ford, Canon, Chrysler, Honeywell, Apple, nVidia, Intel, Telesat Canada, NASA, all branches of the military, Johns Hopkins, National Institutes of Health, Idaho National Energy Lab, Naval Research Lab, Sandia Lab and more. University users include MIT, Stanford, Rochester Institute of Technology, Cambridge and the University of Arizona. Museum users include the Technical Museum of Innovation, the Space and Science Institute, and the Getty Museum.

Images on these unique displays appear to leap off the screen and hang in space or recede into the background. These displays accept input from computers or stereo video sources, and can be switched from 3D to full-resolution 2D viewing with the push of a button. DTI 2D/3D displays provide an effective, economical complement to glasses-based 3D systems and are particularly applicable for extended use environments. The smaller size and lower energy requirements will also be attractive to 3D users.

Much of the company’s current success and growth can be attributed to very early research funding by NASA. In 1990, not long after DTI was established, the agency was looking for a way to enhance its understanding of great masses of data like those for fluid flow around space shuttle launches. It believed that a 3D presentation of this information would aid in its interpretation. NASA contracted the company through its SBIR program to further develop DTI’s then-crude 3D display.

That early funding has led to the current family of Virtual Windowª LCD 3D displays. The technology is readily adaptable to flat panel displays of all sizes and types, and DTI has an active licensing program for manufacturers who wish to add 3D capability to their display products.

An example of application for this unique imaging technology is telemedicine and surgical simulations, both in space and on the ground. Surgical simulators allow virtually unlimited practice with open surgical techniques, making surgical residencies more efficient and effective. Simulators can allow non-surgeon scientists in space to rapidly practice surgical procedures in the event that someone has to fill in for the onboard doctor. This concept can also be extended to many areas on Earth, where funding constraints often minimize the experience of physicians and preclude the availability of state-of-the-art equipment.

While surgical simulators using 3D displays and workstations are now projected to cost nearly $100,000, new software and the availability of more powerful desktop PCs will drive costs down fairly quickly, making them more widely available.

The basic technology has been reduced to a single active substrate that inserts between the LCD and its backlighter. When turned on, it allows the display to show real 3D images by creating light lines. These light lines are placed behind a conventional LCD panel—the exact sort of LCD panel that is so common on laptop computers, desktop displays, personal digital assistants, cell phones and many other devices.

The observer sees the light lines through the columns of pixels on the LCD. Left-eye and right-eye views of the same scene are interleaved on the LCD pixel columns when in 3D mode. Each eye sees the scene from a slightly different angle—just as we do in real life because our eyes are spaced slightly apart. This slight angular displacement is what causes the 3D effect, both in real life and in our display. When the active substrate is turned off, the 3D effect disappears. The image on the LCD display then appears in 2D, just as it does on current laptop computers and PDAs.

This ability to convert instantly from 3D to 2D display is the characteristic that makes DTI displays unique in the world. No other 3D display converts to full-resolution 2D. A single DTI flat panel can fulfill the normal desktop display requirements—word processing, spreadsheets, e-mail/Internet, etc.—and then instantly be switched to 3D display mode for design, research and education applications, saving the cost, size and energy requirements of a second display.

DTI 3D LCD displays are beginning to appear in commercial settings in small quantities. As the technology develops ever more rapidly, most technology watchers are predicting that flat panel-based consumer products will have 3D capability fairly soon. Most companies with flat panels in their product lines already have the volume required to drive the incremental cost of this technology to near 2D-only price. It is a very short jump technologically from surgical simulators to 3D computer and laptop displays, flat panel 3D television and merchandising displays in malls and showrooms—all with pictures that jump off the screen and “bite you on the end of your nose.” Q

For more information, contact Arnold D. Lagergren, president of Dimension Technologies Inc., 315 Mt. Read Blvd., Rochester, NY 14611, www.dti3d.com, 716/436-3530, adl@dti3d.com. Please mention you read about it in Innovation.

NASA Official: Jonathan Root • Web Design: Printing & Design Office, NASA Headquarters • Credits