Patent ID: 7218830

Claim:
A surface illuminator comprising: a surface lighting light guide member having a light emitting first major surface, a second major surface opposed to the first major surface and at least one light receiving side surface; an elongated light guide member having a linear or nonlinear elongated member, at least one surface and at least one light receiving portion; at least one point light source optically communicated with the at least one light receiving portion; a channel light guide member having a plurality of optical core channel elements and a plurality of optical clads alternately aligned to form an elongated fiber optic channel array having a plurality of light entrance core surfaces and a plurality of exit core surfaces opposed to the light entrance core surfaces; wherein the channel light guide member is interposed between the surface lighting light guide member and the elongate light guide member; wherein the optical clads comprise light reflecting material composed of substantially transparent solid material having a refractive index lower than the refractive index of the cores and/or light reflecting metallic material; and wherein each width of the optical core channel elements and/or a pitch between the adjacent optical core channel elements is changed along the elongated optical channel array in such a way that the width increases in accordance with a distance from the point light source and/or the pitch decreases in accordance with a distance from the point light source.