Patent ID: 8388185

Claim:
An image display device comprising: a light-emitting unit including a single light emitter configured to emit light having a predetermined frequency, and a single first frequency modulator configured to modulate the frequency of the light emitted from the light emitter, the light emitter configured to emit the light having the predetermined frequency to the first frequency modulator; an optical fiber which transmits light emitted from the light-emitting unit; and a plurality of spheres disposed so as to be coupled to the optical fiber by evanescent coupling and having optical transparency, wherein: the plurality of the spheres each produce an optical mode in which light entering each sphere from the optical fiber by the evanescent coupling is confined inside and are so formed that predetermined resonant frequencies of the spheres for producing the optical mode are different from one another; the optical fiber provides a plurality of lines, each of said plurality of lines provided with a second frequency modulator and a plurality of spheres, the first frequency modulator is configured to modulate the light emitted from the light emitter to a light having a frequency specifying an N-th line among the plurality of lines, and each of the second frequency modulators is configured to further modulate the modulated light to a light having a resonant frequency of an M-th sphere among the plurality of spheres on the N-th line; and the first frequency modulator and the second frequency modulators are configured to modulate the frequency of the light emitted from the light emitter to correspond to the predetermined resonant frequency of particular spheres selected as a subset of the plurality of spheres such that light is emitted only from said particular spheres and an image is displayed by the light emitted from said particular spheres.