Method and system for disparity adjustment during stereoscopic zoom

1. A method for zooming a stereoscopic image appearing on an electronic display of a stereoscopic image displaying device in response to receiving a user zoom request comprising a zoom magnitude, the stereoscopic image comprising a left-eye image and a right-eye image having relative horizontal disparity and being generated by a an electronic processor from stereoscopic image data stored in a memory as a left-eye image pixel map comprising left-eye pixels and a right-eye image pixel map comprising right-eye pixels, the method comprising the steps of:

scaling the stereoscopic image data to produce scaled stereoscopic image data in response to the user zoom request;

adjusting the horizontal disparity of the scaled stereoscopic image data to produce disparity-adjusted, scaled stereoscopic image data based on a heuristic defining a relationship between the user zoom request, a predetermined stereoscopic factor F s within a range of about 35 to 45 and a relative horizontal shift between the left-eye pixels in the left-eye image pixel map and the right-eye pixels in the right-eye image pixel map; and

displaying a zoomed stereoscopic image on the display corresponding to the disparity-adjusted, scaled stereoscopic image data.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the relationship defined by the heuristic is the equation:

S h =W psd ×( M z /F s )

where S h is the horizontal shift in pixels,

W psd is the horizontal width of the stereoscopic image in pixels,

M z is the zoom magnitude in percent, and

F s is the predetermined stereoscopic factor.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the user zoom request additionally comprises a stereoscopic adjustment factor and the adjusting the horizontal disparity step adjusts the predetermined stereoscopic factor based on the stereoscopic adjustment factor.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the user zoom request additionally comprises a position adjustment factor and the adjusting the horizontal disparity step adjusts a depth of the disparity-adjusted, scaled stereoscopic image data based on the position adjustment factor.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of cropping the disparity-adjusted, scaled stereoscopic image data before the generating step.

6. A method for zooming a stereoscopic image appearing on an electronic display of a stereoscopic image displaying device in response to receiving a user zoom request comprising a zoom magnitude, the stereoscopic image comprising a left-eye image and a right-eye image having relative horizontal disparity and being generated by a an electronic processor from stereoscopic image data stored in a memory as a left-eye image pixel map comprising left-eye pixels and a right-eye image pixel map comprising right-eye pixels, the method comprising the steps of:

scaling the stereoscopic image data to produce scaled stereoscopic image data in response to the user zoom request;

adjusting the horizontal disparity of the scaled stereoscopic image data to produce disparity-adjusted, scaled stereoscopic image data based on a heuristic defining a relationship between the user zoom request, a predetermined stereoscopic factor and a relative horizontal shift between the left-eye pixels in the left-eye image pixel map and the right-eye pixels in the right-eye image pixel map; and

displaying a zoomed stereoscopic image on the display corresponding to the disparity-adjusted, scaled stereoscopic image data,

wherein the user zoom request additionally comprises a stereoscopic adjustment factor and a position adjustment factor and the adjusting the horizontal disparity step adjusts the predetermined stereoscopic factor based on the stereoscopic adjustment factor and adjusts a depth of the disparity-adjusted, scaled stereoscopic image data based on the position adjustment factor, and wherein the relationship defined by the heuristic is an equation:

S h =A pos ×W pxl ×( M z /( F s +A s )

where S h is the horizontal shift in pixels,

A pos is the position adjustment factor

W pxl is the horizontal width of the stereoscopic image in pixels,

M z is the zoom magnitude in percent,

F s is the predetermined stereoscopic factor, and

A s is the stereoscopic adjustment factor.

7. A stereoscopic image generating device comprising:

an electronic display;

electronic memory;

an electronic processor in communication with the display and the electronic memory;

a zoom-selector user interface in communication with the processor, the zoom-selector user interface configured to receive as input a user zoom request comprising a zoom magnitude;

stereoscopic image data stored in the memory, the stereoscopic image data comprising a left-eye image pixel map comprising left-eye pixels and a right-eye image pixel map comprising right-eye pixels, the left-eye image pixel map having horizontal disparity with respect to the right-eye image pixel map, and

one or more programs stored in the memory and configured to be executed by the electronic processor, the one or more programs comprising:

image generation instructions generating on the display an image corresponding to the stereoscopic image data; and

stereoscopic image zoom instructions encoding the method of claim 6 .

8. The stereoscopic image generating device of claim 7 , wherein the zoom-selector user interface is provided by a remote control unit in wireless communication with the electronic processor, the remote control having control electronics in electrical communication with a button switch and a contact-sensitive display, the control electronics configured to determining whether one or more contacts with the contact-sensitive display or the button switch represents a user zoom request and if a user zoom request has been made transmitting the user zoom request to the electronic processor.