Sculptures of Light

Abstract

There's something deeply satisfying about wresting a three-dimensional image from a two-dimensional picture. Witness the recent popularity of computer-generated Magic Eye art: Wherever one of these pictures hangs, throngs of people gather around to stare, squint, and cross their eyes in an attempt to make the concealed 3-D form leap out. For those 3-D pictures, looking for the images is part of the fun. For 3-D techniques being developed for medical imaging, however, the fewer ocular and mental acrobatics required, the better. Existing approaches, such as computer images that can be rotated at will, work well in many cases, but they often give only a limited viewing angle or require clumsy headgear. Their fundamental drawback is that they are still essentially flat. Recently, a group of researchers took a major step toward true 3-D visualization. Elizabeth Downing of 3D Technology Laboratories in Mountain View, Calif., and her colleagues have designed a three-color, 3-D display that generates what appear to be solid objects rather than creating an optical illusion on a computer screen. They describe their creation in the Aug. 30 SCwENCE. Though still a few years away from practical use, the invention created a flurry of excitement among scientists who foresee its potential applications. It's an approach which is unique in what it can deliver and the way it goes about displaying information, says study coauthor Roger Macfarlane, a physicist at IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif. The device is the culmination of 8 years' work by Downing while studying mechanical engineering at Stanford University, and now she's determined to see her display through to the marketplace.