Patent ID: 7277120

Claim:
A method of aligning left and right stereoscopic images, the method comprising: capturing right stereoscopic image pixel information for a target object in a first array; capturing left stereoscopic image pixel information for the target object in a second array; calculating a first intersection position in the first array by: for each of a plurality of rows in the first array, determining a first pixel column position that exceeds a row threshold value, a last pixel column position that exceeds the row threshold value, and a column position between the first pixel column position and the last pixel column position; for each of a plurality of columns in the first array, determining a first pixel row position that exceeds a column threshold value, a last pixel row position that exceeds the column threshold value, and row position between the first pixel row position and the last pixel row position; and determining a position at which a first line fitted to the column positions between the first pixel column positions and the last pixel column positions intersects a second line fitted to the row positions between the first pixel row positions and the last pixel row positions; calculating a second intersection position in the second array; selecting a portion of the first array and a portion of the second array such that the calculated intersection positions for each array substantially occupy the same position relative to the selected portions; and outputting an aligned stereoscopic image to a viewer by displaying the selected portion of the first array and the selected portion of the second array.