Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a unique electro- optic volumetric three dimensional (3-D) display monitor that will enable radiologists, physicians, and surgeons to directly determine the location, size, shape, and distribution of tumors with high geometric and photometric accuracy. The proposed multiplanar volumetric 3-D display is based on two unique electro-optic Components: (l) a high speed VLSI-back plane ferroelectric liquid crystal spatial-light- modulator (FLC-SLM) chip, and (2) an electrically tunable variable focal plane refractive optical element lens. Using these components, a high speed time sequence of tomographic slice images can be projected into space, forming a precisely reconstructed tomogram in a 3-D volume with full physical depth cues. The display will be a very compact, lightweight, and low.power device, with no moving parts, capable of displaying 100 or more data slices in real time from identical or complementary tomographic scans. In Phase I, POC will design a laboratory prototype and demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed concept by integrating our existing 128 x 128 FLC-SLM with a tunable refractive optics Fresnel lens. A set of tomographic slice images will be used to test the performance of the demonstration device.
Commercial applications of the EOVTD will be in entertainment (i.e., video games), CAD/CAM, surveillance photogrammetry, training and simulation, air traffic control, and molecular modeling, while the components (FLC-SLM and TROEL) will find applications in advanced projection displays, optical correlators and processors, confocal microscopes, video cameras and space telescopes.
