Ian M. Mcdowall

Adaptive color display via perceptually-driven factored spectral projection

Fundamental display characteristics are constantly being improved, especially resolution, dynamic range, and color reproduction. However, whereas high resolution and high-dynamic range displays have matured as a technology, it remains largely unclear how to extend the color gamut of a display without either sacrificing light throughput or making other tradeoffs. In this paper, we advocate for adaptive color display; with hardware implementations that allow for color primaries to be dynamically chosen, an optimal gamut and corresponding pixel states can be computed in a content-adaptive and user-centric manner. We build a flexible gamut projector and develop a perceptually-driven optimization framework that robustly factors a wide color gamut target image into a set of time-multiplexed primaries and corresponding pixel values. We demonstrate that adaptive primary selection has many benefits over fixed gamut selection and show that our algorithm for joint primary selection and gamut mapping performs better than existing methods. Finally, we evaluate the proposed computational display system extensively in simulation and, via photographs and user experiments, with a prototype adaptive color projector.

Put on your 3D glasses now: the past, present, and future of virtual and augmented reality

Wearable displays appear on the cusp of consumer adoption, with a new wave of excitement in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) ignited last year by the joint introduction of two early-stage prototypes: the Oculus Rift Developer Kit1 and the Google Glass Explorer Edition2. The existence of these compelling consumer prototypes in 2013 is a testament to the great technological strides made in optical fabrication, embedded computing, motion tracking, and real-time rendering since the introduction of the first head-mounted display (HMD) by Ivan Sutherland in 1968. In this course, we review the past, present, and future of wearable displays, with presentations from VR/AR pioneers, leading entrepreneurs, and academic researchers. The course begins with a historical retrospective by Henry Fuchs (UNC Chapel Hill). Mark Mine (Walt Disney Imagineering) will then discuss how virtual reality technologies are applied at Disney, both in front of guests and behind the scenes. Michael Abrash (Oculus VR) will describe why VR isn’t just the next platform, why that’s so, what’s going to be involved to get to that point, and why VR is going to open up huge new research and development directions. Afterward, Ian McDowall (Intuitive Surgical, Fakespace Labs) will present an in-depth tutorial on the the engineering of wearable displays, spanning human factors to optical design. Douglas Lanman (NVIDIA Research) will then expand on this tutorial, summarizing emerging wearable display technologies, emphasizing optical designs capable of achieving eyeglasses-like form factors. SIGGRAPH has a long been the premiere venue for disseminating research in virtual and augment reality. This course continues this tradition, providing a historical retrospective, a state-of-the-art report, and—most significantly—an inspiration for young researchers and developers entering a world of wearable displays.

Visualization in Robotic Surgery

Visualization can be defined as “a technique for creating images, diagrams, or animations to communicate a message” [1]. Visualization in surgical robotics involves displaying images of patient anatomy to the surgeon. Such images can be provided by optical or tomographic imaging techniques.