Patent ID: 7559653

Claim:
A stereoscopic imaging apparatus comprising: a) an illumination source providing a first polarized illumination beam for a left eye imaging channel and a second polarized illumination beam for a right eye imaging channel, wherein the illumination source comprises at least one uniformizing element for uniformizing the first and second illumination beams; b) a left channel modulation apparatus for modulating the first polarized illumination beam to provide the left eye portion of a stereoscopic image and a right channel modulation apparatus for modulating the second polarized illumination beam to provide the right eye portion of the stereoscopic image, wherein each channel modulation apparatus further comprises: i) a color separator for separating the polarized illumination beam into at least a first component wavelength illumination and a second component wavelength illumination; ii) at least two component wavelength modulating sections, each component wavelength modulating section accepting a corresponding component wavelength illumination and modulating the component wavelength illumination to provide a modulated component wavelength beam, each component wavelength modulating section comprising: a portion of a monochrome transmissive liquid crystal modulator panel that has been segmented into at least a first portion and a second portion, and wherein each portion is spatially separated from each other portion; an illumination path lens for focusing the corresponding component wavelength illumination through the corresponding portion of the monochrome transmissive liquid crystal modulator panel; an analyzer for further conditioning the polarization of the modulated component wavelength beam; c) at least one projection lens for forming, onto a display surface, a composite image that superimposes an image formed from the modulated component wavelength beam of the left channel modulation apparatus with the image formed from the modulated component wavelength beam of the right channel modulation apparatus; and d) a channel differentiator device provided to a viewer for separating the left eye portion and right eye portion of the stereoscopic image.