Patent ID: 8085292

Claim:
A method of creating an autostereoscopic image comprising the steps of: determining a value of a front pixel spread; determining a value of a back pixel spread; determining N different positions for an image acquisition device, or devices, based, at least in part, on said values of said front pixel spread and said back pixel spread; acquiring N source images using said image acquisition device, or devices, positioned at said N different positions; and interleaving said N source images to create an autostereoscopic image, wherein at least one of said step of determining a value of said front pixel spread and/or said step of determining a value of said back pixel spread includes the following: determining angle A 1 based on the following formula: A 1 =M/N−1, where M is a value between 0° and 180° and N is the number of different positions for the image acquisition device or devices; determining an arbitrary Z measurement; determining an arbitrary starting estimate of the pixel spread; calculating a Z axis position of a testing artifact based on N, the current estimate of the pixel spread, the arbitrary Z measurement, and angle A 1 ; determining the N different positions of the one or more image acquisition devices based on N, angle A 1 and the current calculated Z axis position of the testing artifact; creating a test autostereoscopic image of a testing artifact positioned at the current calculated Z axis position with one or more image acquisition devices at the determined N different positions; judging whether the current test autostereoscopic image resolved properly, wherein: if the current test autostereoscopic image resolved properly, the current estimate of the pixel spread is increased, and the process repeats the steps of calculating a Z axis position, determining the N different positions, creating a test autostereoscopic image, and judging the current auto stereoscopic image; if the current test autostereoscopic image did not resolve properly, recollecting whether the previous autostereoscopic image resolved properly, and further wherein if the previous autostereoscopic image resolved properly, ending the method and relying on the associated previous estimate of the pixel spread as the final pixel spread, but if the previous autostereoscopic image did no resolve properly, the current estimate of the pixel spread is decreased, and the process repeats the steps of calculating a Z axis position, determining the N different positions, creating a test autostereoscopic image, and judging the current autostereoscopic image; and conveying to a user the final pixel spread from the judging step.