Patent ID: 7460287

Claim:
A method of projecting an image, comprising the steps of: a) generating, from a laser, a laser beam having a beam spot in cross-section, the beam spot having an oval shape with mutually orthogonal long and narrow spot dimensions; b) sweeping the beam spot along mutually orthogonal scan directions to project a pattern of scan lines each having a number of pixels arranged along one of the scan directions, each pixel having mutually orthogonal pixel dimensions corresponding to the long and narrow spot dimensions; c) orienting the narrow spot dimension along the one scan direction by turning the laser, the pixel dimension along the one scan direction being larger than the narrow spot dimension along the one scan direction due to the sweeping to render the pixel dimensions more symmetrical, the long spot dimension of the beam spot extending along a transverse scan direction perpendicular to the one scan direction, the scan lines being arranged along the transverse scan direction, and the corresponding dimension of each pixel on each of the scan lines throughout the image along the transverse scan direction at least partially overlapping the corresponding dimension of each pixel on respectively adjacent scan lines throughout the image along the transverse scan direction; and d) causing selected pixels to be illuminated, and rendered visible, to produce the image with more symmetrical pixels.