Three-Dimensional Imaging for Creating Real-World-Like Environments

Three-dimensional imaging is still not in the full commercial stage, but its application is widening due to its capability of creating real-world-like environments. This capability is especially important in realizing reality communication and telepresence operations in medical and unreachable places. For these applications, technologies for interacting with objects in the 3-D image should also be developed. The widespread use of 3-D images is expected in near future, but before that, problems of minimizing physical stresses, especially eye fatigue, should be solved for 3-D imaging. Currently, expected solutions to the problems are electroholography and super multiview methods. These two methods work at different principles, but they both can provide the continuous parallax as in the real-world scenes/objects. Electroholography can also provide focusable depth information to the viewers, though its viewing zone angle is limited. For the super multiview, it is not apparent that it can provide the focusable depth information, but it can provide more comfortable viewing condition than the holography because of its wider viewing zone angle.