Patent ID: 7929066

Claim:
A stereoscopic apparatus, comprising: (A) a matrix polarization encoding device, that has M rows and N columns; and (B) a polarization selector, that is arranged sequentially on the same optical axis as the matrix polarization encoding device; wherein (a) outputs of the selector are optically connected with left and right observation areas, (b) a transfer characteristic for a mn-th element of the matrix polarization encoding device is determined by an inverse trigonometric function of a ratio of an algebraic relation of B L mn and B R mn , which are intensity values in a mn-th pixel of left and right views of a projected 3-dimensional image respectively, wherein m=1, 2, . . . , M, n=1, 2, . . . , N, (c) the matrix polarization encoding device comprises a working medium that has mutually orthogonal directions of optical anisotropy for each pair of adjacent columns of the matrix polarization encoding device; and (d) the polarization selector comprises a working medium comprising electrically addressable columns such that one of the following conditions is satisfied: (i) an initial optical anisotropy state of the polarization selector is such that all the columns of the working medium of the polarization selector have the same optical anisotropy direction, and a subsequent optical anisotropy state of the polarization selector is such that each two adjacent columns of the working medium of the polarization selector have mutually orthogonal anisotropy directions; or (ii) an initial optical anisotropy state of the polarization selector is such that each two adjacent columns of the working medium of the polarization selector have mutually orthogonal anisotropy directions.