Edge-guided resolution enhancement in projectors via optical pixel sharing

  • Authors:
  • Behzad Sajadi;M. Gopi;Aditi Majumder

  • Affiliations:
  • University of California, Irvine;University of California, Irvine;University of California, Irvine

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG) - SIGGRAPH 2012 Conference Proceedings
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

Digital projection technology has improved significantly in recent years. But, the relationship of cost with respect to available resolution in projectors is still super-linear. In this paper, we present a method that uses projector light modulator panels (e.g. LCD or DMD panels) of resolution n X n to create a perceptually close match to a target higher resolution cn X cn image, where c is a small integer greater than 1. This is achieved by enhancing the resolution using smaller pixels at specific regions of interest like edges. A target high resolution image (cn X cn) is first decomposed into (a) a high resolution (cn X cn) but sparse edge image, and (b) a complementary lower resolution (n X n) non-edge image. These images are then projected in a time sequential manner at a high frame rate to create an edge-enhanced image -- an image where the pixel density is not uniform but changes spatially. In 3D ready projectors with readily available refresh rate of 120Hz, such a temporal multiplexing is imperceptible to the user and the edge-enhanced image is perceptually almost identical to the target high resolution image. To create the higher resolution edge image, we introduce the concept of optical pixel sharing. This reduces the projected pixel size by a factor of 1/c2 while increasing the pixel density by c2 at the edges enabling true higher resolution edges. Due to the sparsity of the edge pixels in an image we are able to choose a sufficiently large subset of these to be displayed at the higher resolution using perceptual parameters. We present a statistical analysis quantifying the expected number of pixels that will be reproduced at the higher resolution and verify it for different types of images.