AUTOSTEREOSCOPIC VISUALIZATION AND MEASUREMENT: PRINCIPLES AND EVALUATION

Autostereoscope is a technology that allows for a viewer to obtain stereoscopic effect without wearing glasses. This may potentially be used as a replacement or alternative to the current goggle-based stereoscopic technologies used in visualization and mapping practice. This paper studies the principles of popular autostereoscopic technologies, fundamental issues in using this technology for visualization, photogrammetry, and the performance of autostereoscopic photogrammetric measurement. In particular, the autostereoscopic effect is studied in terms of viewing zone and perceived depth. As a fundamental step towards autostereoscopic photogrammetry, the imaging geometry of such displays is analytically presented. To evaluate the properties and performance of the autostereoscopic measurement, we conduct a series of experiments using a backlight autostereoscopic display. A stereo pair at a pixel size of 25 and 50 microns are used in the study. Three dozens of well defined and easily identified feature points are measured by seven operators using the developed autostereoscopic measurement toolkit Auto3D. The consistency of these measurement results is analyzed. In addition, they are also compared with the ones obtained from regular stereoscopic display. The work is a primary effort towards lighter and mobile image interpretation and measurement environment. 1