KR20160079552A - 3D display device and driving method thereof - Google Patents

Abstract

Provided is a stereoscopic image display device capable of improving quality of a 3D image, while alleviating level difference by conducting a compensation process only for data in an area in which the level difference has occurred. The stereoscopic image display device comprises: an image panel, an image compensation unit, and a data operation unit. The image compensation unit is configured to estimate a position on the image panel, on which the level difference is expected to occur so as to define a compensation area and compensate for data included in the compensation area to generate compensation image data.

Description

[0001] The present invention relates to a stereoscopic image display device and a driving method thereof,

The present invention relates to a stereoscopic image display apparatus, and more particularly, to a stereoscopic image display apparatus and a method of operating the same that can alleviate a step phenomenon caused by a view misalignment in a multi view stereoscopic image display apparatus.

The 3D display (hereinafter, referred to as a stereoscopic image display device) is a stereoscopic image display device in which, by using binocular disparity, which is caused when the eye is separated from the lateral direction by about 65 mm, Which is a total system that allows you to feel a three-dimensional feeling.

In other words, our eyes will see different images even if we look at the same things because of binocular parallax. When these two images are transmitted to the brain through the retina, the brain will be able to feel the stereoscopic effect by fusing them exactly with each other. It is the stereoscopic image display device that displays two right and left images at the same time in the 2D display device and sends them to each eye to create a virtual three-dimensional image.

In order to display images of two channels in one screen in such a stereoscopic image display device, in most cases, one line is changed one line at a time horizontally or vertically in one screen and outputted one channel at a time.

In this way, when images of two channels are output from one display device at the same time, in the case of the non-eyeglass system due to the hardware structure, the right image intact into the right eye, and the left image enters into the left eye only. In addition, in the case of wearing the glasses, the right image is visually obscured by the special glasses suitable for each method, and the left image is obscured by the right eye so that the right eye can not be seen.

Representative examples of the non-eyewear method include a lenticular method and a parallax barrier method in which a lenticular lens plate in which cylindrical lenses are vertically arranged is installed in front of the image panel.

FIG. 1 is a view for explaining the concept of a general lenticular stereoscopic image display apparatus, and shows a relationship between a rear distance S of a lens and a viewing distance v.

Referring to FIG. 1, a typical lenticular stereoscopic image display device includes a liquid crystal panel 10 filled with a liquid crystal between upper and lower substrates, a liquid crystal panel 10 disposed therebetween, and a rear surface of the liquid crystal panel 10, And a lenticular lens plate 20 positioned on the front surface of the liquid crystal panel 10 for realizing a backlight unit (not shown) and a stereoscopic image.

The lenticular lens plate 20 is formed by forming, on a flat substrate, a plurality of lenticular lenses whose upper surfaces are formed of a material layer of a convex lens shape. The lenticular lens plate 20 serves to divide the left and right eye images. The optimum viewing distance v from the lenticular lens plate 20 is a diamond shape in which images corresponding to the left and right eyes normally reach the left and right eyes, respectively A viewing diamond (regular region) (not shown) is formed. In the viewing diamond, view data, that is, an image, of the sub-pixels of the corresponding liquid crystal panel 10 is formed. View data refers to images taken by cameras separated by a distance of the binocular interval.

The liquid crystal panel 10 and the lenticular lens plate 20 are supported by an instrument (not shown) or the like so that the liquid crystal panel 10 and the lenticular lens plate 20 are spaced apart from each other by a predetermined distance Back distance (S). At this time, in a general lenticular stereoscopic image display apparatus, a gap glass 26 is inserted to keep the rear distance S constant.

As described above, since the stereoscopic image display apparatus of the lenticular system is implemented in a multi view manner formed according to a view map designed initially, the viewer can view the 3D image when entering the predetermined view area .

However, when the view map is shifted by the lenticular lens in the conventional lenticular stereoscopic image display apparatus, the viewer can not view the 3D image corresponding to the predetermined view area.

In other words, as shown in Fig. 2, in the conventional lenticular stereoscopic image display apparatus, a step sequence (seam line) is generated due to the shift of the view map. Due to such a step phenomenon, the viewer views the image corresponding to the area of the view other than the image in the predetermined view area.

Conventionally, in order to improve such a step difference, interpolation is performed on all the images, that is, the entire area of the multi-view image data. However, this image interpolation causes blurring of the 3D image displayed on each view, that is, blur, which degrades the quality of the 3D image.

An object of the present invention is to provide a stereoscopic image display apparatus and a method for operating the stereoscopic image display apparatus capable of enhancing 3D image quality while improving a step phenomenon by performing image compensation only on data in a region where a step phenomenon occurs in an image.

According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a stereoscopic image display apparatus including an image panel, an image compensation unit, and a data driver.

The image compensation unit defines a compensation region by estimating a position at which a step phenomenon occurs in the image panel. In addition, compensated image data is generated by compensating data corresponding to the compensation region from an externally input video signal.

According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of operating a stereoscopic image display device, the method comprising: generating stepped coordinate information by estimating a position at which a stepped phenomenon occurs, And generating compensation image data by compensating data applied to the pixels of the compensation region defined according to the view map, the step coordinate information, and the time difference information.

In the stereoscopic image display apparatus according to the present invention, compensated image data is generated by performing image compensation only at a position where a step phenomenon occurs according to a view shift in an image panel, so that a clear 3D image can be displayed in a region where a step phenomenon does not occur have. Accordingly, in the stereoscopic image display device of the present invention, the quality of the 3D image can be enhanced.

1 is a view for explaining the concept of a general lenticular stereoscopic image display apparatus.
2 is a view showing a step phenomenon caused by a view shift in a conventional stereoscopic image display apparatus.
3 is a diagram illustrating a configuration of a stereoscopic image display apparatus according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention.
4 is a diagram showing the configuration of the image compensating unit shown in FIG.
Fig. 5 is a diagram showing the configuration of the parallax calculating unit of Fig. 4;
6A to 6C are operation examples showing the operation of the image compensating unit.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS The advantages and features of the present invention and the manner of achieving them will become apparent with reference to the embodiments described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings. It should be understood, however, that the invention is not limited to the disclosed embodiments, but is capable of many different forms and should not be construed as limited to the embodiments set forth herein. Rather, these embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will be thorough and complete, To fully disclose the scope of the invention to those skilled in the art, and the invention is only defined by the scope of the claims. Like reference numerals refer to like elements throughout the specification. The dimensions and relative sizes of the layers and regions in the figures may be exaggerated for clarity of illustration.

The terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting of the invention. In the present specification, the singular form includes plural forms unless otherwise specified in the specification. &Quot; comprise "and / or" comprising ", as used in the specification, means that the presence of stated elements, Or additions.

Hereinafter, a stereoscopic image display apparatus according to the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. For convenience of explanation, the stereoscopic image display apparatus of the present invention is exemplified by a liquid crystal display apparatus. However, the stereoscopic image display device of the present invention can be applied to various flat panel display devices such as organic light emitting display devices.

3 is a diagram illustrating a configuration of a stereoscopic image display apparatus according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention.

3, the stereoscopic image display apparatus 100 includes a video panel 110, a gate driver 120, a data driver 130, a timing controller 140, and an image compensator 150 . The stereoscopic image display apparatus 100 may be a non-spectacle type display apparatus.

A plurality of subpixels P representing the colors of R, G and B are formed on the image panel 110. These subpixels P act on a 3D filter (not shown) And left eye pixels and right eye pixels in order to display an image. The left eye image can be displayed in the left eye pixel, and the right eye image can be displayed in the right eye pixel.

The image panel 110 may comprise an array substrate (not shown), a color filter substrate (not shown), and a liquid crystal layer (not shown) between the two substrates.

The array substrate includes a plurality of gate lines GL and a plurality of data lines DL formed to intersect with each other, a thin film transistor T formed for each pixel region defined in the intersection region of the gate line GL and the data line DL, A liquid crystal capacitor Clc and a storage capacitor Cst.

The color filter substrate includes a color filter layer (not shown) composed of a plurality of color filters for realizing colors of R, G, and B, a black matrix (not shown) for separating color filters and a color filter layer and a common electrode Not shown).

The above-described image panel 110 can display a 3D image through a 3D filter under the control of the timing controller 140. The video panel 110 of the present embodiment may display a multi view 3D image for providing a 3D image to a plurality of users. In other words, the image panel 110 displays a multi-view 2D image, which can be displayed as a multi-view 3D image through a 3D filter.

The 3D filter optically separates the path of the multi-view 2D image displayed on the image panel 110 and selectively transmits the left eye image and the right eye image output from the left eye pixels and the right eye pixels of the image panel 110 Can be blocked. The 3D filter can be implemented by a lenticular lens or a barrier or the like.

The gate driver 120 may generate a gate signal according to the gate control signal GCS provided from the timing controller 140. [ The gate signal may be sequentially output to the plurality of gate lines GL of the image panel 110. [ The gate driver 120 may include a shift register and a level shifter, and may be formed in a gate in panel (GIP) manner in the image panel 110.

The data driver 130 may generate a data signal from the video data RGB 'according to the data control signal DCS provided from the timing controller 140. [ The data signal may be output to a plurality of data lines DL of the image panel 110. Here, the image data RGB 'may be the compensated image data RGB' compensated by the image compensating unit 150 to be described later.

The timing controller 140 may generate a gate control signal GCS and a data control signal DCS according to a control signal CNT provided from an external system (not shown). For example, the timing controller 140 generates a gate control signal (GCS) from a timing signal such as a data clock signal DCLK, a horizontal synchronization signal Hsync, a vertical synchronization signal Vsync, and a data enable signal DE provided from an external system, And a data control signal DCS.

The gate control signal GCS includes a gate start pulse GSP, a gate output enable signal GOE and a gate shift clock GSC and may be output to the gate driver 120. [ The data control signal DCS includes a source start pulse SSP, a source shift clock SSC, a source output enable SOE and a polarity control signal POL and may be output to the data driver 130 .

The image compensating unit 150 may generate the compensated image data RGB 'by compensating a specific region of the image signal RGB provided from the external system, for example, the multi-view image signal. The compensated image data RGB 'may be output to the timing controller 140 and output to the data driver 130 together with the data control signal DCS.

The image compensating unit 150 can detect a region where a seam line is generated in the image signal RGB. The step difference phenomenon is a phenomenon in which a multi-view 3D image displayed through the image panel 110 appears in a vertical line shape by overlapping images when displayed in a view area other than the corresponding view area, When there is a large number of view-to-view misalignments, depending on the characteristics of the view.

The image compensating unit 150 compensates the gradation level of the data voltage applied to the pixels of the image panel 110 corresponding to the compensation region including a predetermined number of pixels around the detected stepped development region, Can be generated.

In other words, the image compensating unit 150 may generate the compensated image data RGB 'by compensating the image data to be applied to the compensation region among the image signals RGB input from the outside. The image compensator 150 may be configured independently of the timing controller 140 or may be included in the timing controller 140.

As described above, the image compensating unit 150 may perform image compensation only on a specific region in the input image signal RGB to generate the compensated image data RGB '. Accordingly, in the stereoscopic image display apparatus 100 of the present embodiment, it is possible to improve a step phenomenon in the 3D image by the compensated image data RGB ', and to prevent the quality of the 3D image from deteriorating.

Hereinafter, the configuration and operation of the image compensator 150 will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing the configuration of the image compensating unit shown in FIG. 3, and FIG. 5 is a diagram showing the configuration of the view parallax calculating unit of FIG. 6A to 6C are operation examples showing the operation of the image compensating unit.

3 and 4, the image compensating unit 150 may generate and output compensated image data RGB 'compensated for data of a specific region in the image signal RGB. The position estimating unit 151 ), A parallax calculating unit 153, and an interpolation unit 155.

The position estimating unit 151 may estimate the position where the step difference will occur in the image panel 110 and output position information, for example, the step coordinate information SI. In addition, the position estimating unit 151 can output the view map VM designed together with the step coordinate information SI.

6A, the position estimation unit 151 determines whether the view map VM is correctly recognized at a virtual user position, and outputs the step coordinate information SI and the view map VM according to the determination result can do.

In other words, in the case where the view map VM is information on the 3-view image, the position estimating unit 151 calculates three virtual positions, for example, the first position P1, the second position P2, P3) can be set. Here, the first position P1 is a position at which the image for the first view is viewed, the second position P2 is a position at which the image for the second view is viewed, the third position P3, May be a position where an image for the third view is viewed. The interval T between the respective positions P1, P2, and P3 may be the same as the period of each view in the view map VM.

The position estimating unit 151 projects an image of the view map VM corresponding to the set three positions P1, P2 and P3 and judges whether or not the image of the projection image matches the image of the view map VM . In other words, the position estimation unit 151 determines whether the projection image of the first position P1 is the image of the first view, whether the projection image of the second position P2 is the image of the second view, It can be determined whether the projection image of the position P3 is the image of the third view.

Here, as shown in FIG. 6A, at the specific position of the image panel 110, there is a discrepancy between the image of the view map VM and the projected image due to the optical characteristics of the lenticular lens.

In other words, the image of the first view is projected to the first position P1 at a specific position of the image panel 110, the image of the third view is projected at the second position P2, It can be seen that the image of the second view is projected and that the view map VM for the second view and the third view is displaced. At this time, the position estimating unit 151 extracts the coordinates of the position where the shift of the view map VM has occurred and outputs it as the step coordinate information SI.

As described above, the position estimation unit 151 projects an image for the view map VM to determine whether the view map VM and the projection image coincide at the respective positions P1, P2, and P3, The coordinate information SI can be outputted.

Here, the position estimating unit 151 performs the above-described operation for each horizontal line of the image panel 110 to calculate the step coordinate information SI, that is, the step coordinate information SI for one horizontal line of the image panel 110 Can be output. Accordingly, the position estimating unit 151 repeatedly performs the above-described operations by the number of all the horizontal lines of the image panel 110, that is, the number of the plurality of gate lines GL, The step coordinate information SI can be outputted for the step difference phenomenon.

In the present embodiment, the view map VM is information on three view images. However, the present invention is not limited thereto. In other words, the view map VM may vary according to the number of views of the 3D image displayed on the image panel 110.

The parallax calculating unit 153 can calculate and output parallax information (PI) according to the position of the object from the externally input image signal RGB. The parallax calculating unit 153 can extract the objects corresponding to each other in the respective view images of the image signal RGB and calculate the parallax information PI according to the difference of the position coordinates between the extracted objects.

The parallax calculating unit 153 extracts depth information about the object from each view image of the image signal RGB and calculates parallax information PI according to the positional difference between the objects from the depth information and outputs it . At this time, the parallax calculating unit 153 may output a larger value among the depth information of the extracted object as parallax information (PI).

The parallax calculating unit 153 can calculate the parallax information PI by the number of pixels corresponding to the position coordinate difference. The time difference calculating unit 153 may include a position determining unit 161 and a coordinate comparing unit 163. [

The position determination unit 161 may extract and output the position coordinates of the object corresponding to each of the view images of the video signal RGB. The position determination unit 161 can output the position coordinates of the objects corresponding to each other in all the view images of the video signal RGB. In addition, the position determination unit 161 may output the position coordinates of the objects corresponding to each other in the first view image and the last view image of the image signal RGB.

6B, when the image signal RGB is composed of N (N is a natural number) view images, the position determination unit 161 determines the position of the first view image V1 and the Nth view image Vn, The position coordinates of the objects ob1 and obn corresponding to each other can be output.

In other words, the position determination unit 161 extracts position coordinates (x, y) of the first object ob1 from the first view image V1 and outputs the position coordinates (x, y) It is possible to extract and output the positional coordinates (xa, y) for the n-th object obn corresponding to the first object ob1 of the image V1. Here, in the Nth view image Vn of the image signal RGB, the first object ob1 displayed in the first view image V1 is shifted by -a in the x-axis direction, that is, to the left side of the screen (N) is displayed as an n-th object (obn).

The coordinate comparing unit 163 compares the object position coordinates of each view image calculated by the position determining unit 161, calculates a difference value, and outputs the difference value as parallax information (PI). As described above, the parallax information PI can be calculated and output as the number of pixels according to the position coordinate difference.

6B, for example, the position coordinate (x, y) of the first object ob1 of the first view image V1 is output from the position determination unit 161, and the n-th object the coordinate comparing unit 163 calculates the difference value between the two output position coordinates, that is, the number of pixels corresponding to a, and outputs it as parallax information (PI) because the position coordinates (xa, y) .

6B, parallax information PI is calculated according to the difference between the position coordinates of the object corresponding to the first view image V1 and the N view image Vn of the image signal RGB, for example, Respectively. However, in the present invention, it is possible to compare each view image of each of the view images of the image signal (RGB) one by one, to calculate the difference between the position coordinates of the corresponding objects, and to output the time difference information (PI). At this time, the parallax information PI can be output as the largest value among the calculated difference values.

The interpolating unit 155 extracts the video signal RGB from the parallax information PI output from the parallax calculating unit 153 according to the step coordinate information SI and the view map VM output from the position estimating unit 151 It is possible to perform image compensation for a specific area and output the compensated image data RGB 'corresponding thereto.

The interpolation section 155 defines a compensation area based on the view map VM and the time difference information PI about the step coordinate information SI and compensates the gradation level applied to the pixels included in the defined compensation area , And the compensated image data (RGB '). The interpolation section 155 can determine the compensation area I_R according to the following equation (1).

[Equation 1]

I_R = PI / 2 * VM

Here, PI denotes the number of pixels of the parallax information, and VM denotes the width of the view map.

In other words, when the number of pixels of the parallax information PI outputted from the parallax calculating unit 153 is 30 and the width of the view map VM is 3, the interpolating unit 155 converts the interpolated image coordinates An area corresponding to 45 pixels in the left / right direction around the coordinate corresponding to the information SI can be defined as a compensation area.

The interpolator 155 may perform image interpolation for all the pixels included in the defined compensation area to output the compensated image data RGB '. The compensated image data RGB 'may be data obtained by compensating a gradation level applied to a pixel in a region where a step phenomenon occurs in the image signal RGB. The compensated image data RGB 'may be output to the data driver 130 through the timing controller 140.

As described above, the image compensating unit 150 according to the present embodiment performs image compensation only at a position where a step phenomenon occurs according to a view shift in the image panel 110 to generate compensated image data RGB ' have. At this time, the 3D image may appear slightly blurry according to the image compensation in the region where the step difference has occurred. However, a clear 3D image can be displayed because the image compensation is not performed in the remaining area in which the step difference phenomenon does not occur.

Accordingly, the stereoscopic image display apparatus 100 of the present invention can display a clear 3D image in a region other than a region where a step phenomenon occurs, as compared with a conventional stereoscopic image display apparatus, thereby improving the quality of a 3D image .

While a number of embodiments have been described in detail above, it should be construed as being illustrative of preferred embodiments rather than limiting the scope of the invention. Therefore, the invention should not be construed as limited to the embodiments described, but should be determined by equivalents to the appended claims and the claims.

100: stereoscopic image display device 110: image panel
120: Gate driver 130: Data driver
140: timing control unit 150:
151: Position estimation unit 153:
155: interpolator 161: position determining unit
163: coordinate comparison unit

Claims (12)

A video panel composed of a plurality of pixels and sequentially displaying a multi-view 3D image;
An image compensation unit for defining a compensation region by estimating a position at which the step difference will occur in the image panel and generating compensated image data by compensating data corresponding to the compensation region in an externally inputted multi view image signal; And
And a data driver for generating a data signal according to the compensated image data and outputting the data signal to the image panel. The apparatus of claim 1,
A position estimator for estimating a position at which the step difference has occurred according to the view map and outputting the step coordinate information;
A parallax calculating unit for outputting parallax information according to a positional difference between objects corresponding to each other in at least one pair of view images of the video signal; And
And an interpolation unit for defining the compensation region around the step coordinate information according to the view map and the parallax information and for compensating data applied to pixels of the compensation region in the video signal to output the compensation video data And the three-dimensional image display device. 3. The method of claim 2,
Wherein the position estimating unit extracts coordinates in which the image of the view map is shifted and displayed in the image panel, and outputs the coordinates as the step coordinate information. The apparatus according to claim 2,
A position determiner for outputting position coordinates of objects corresponding to each other in the pair of view images; And
And outputting the parallax information as a number of pixels according to the difference value between the pair of position coordinates output. 3. The method of claim 2,
Wherein the parallax calculating unit outputs the parallax information according to depth information of objects corresponding to each other in the pair of view images. The method according to claim 1,
Wherein the compensation region is defined by 1/2 in the left / right direction around the coordinate of the step coordinate information. Generating stepped coordinate information by estimating a position where a step phenomenon will occur according to a view map in an image panel on which a 3D image is displayed;
Generating parallax information from position coordinates of objects corresponding to each other in all view images of a multi-view image signal input from the outside; And
Defining compensating regions of the image signal according to the view map, the step coordinate information, and the parallax information, and compensating the data applied to the pixels of the compensation region in the image signal to generate compensated image data A method of operating a stereoscopic image display apparatus. 8. The method of claim 7, wherein generating the step coordinate information comprises:
Setting one or more virtual positions according to the width of the view map;
Displaying an image of the view map on the image panel and determining whether an image of the corresponding view area is displayed at the virtual position; And
And extracting the coordinates of the image panel in which the image of the corresponding view region is not displayed at the virtual position, to generate the stepped coordinate information. 9. The method of claim 8,
And displaying the image of the view map for each horizontal line of the image panel to determine whether the image of the corresponding view area is displayed at the virtual position. 8. The method of claim 7, wherein generating the parallax information comprises:
Extracting position coordinates of objects corresponding to each other in at least one pair of view images among all view images of the image signal; And
And generating the parallax information by the number of pixels according to the difference between the extracted position coordinates. 8. The method of claim 7,
The step of generating the parallax information may include extracting depth information of objects corresponding to each other in at least one pair of view images of all view images of the video signal and generating the parallax information according to the position difference from the extracted depth information And displaying the stereoscopic image on the stereoscopic image display device. 8. The method of claim 7,
Wherein the compensation region is defined as a product of a number of pixels of the parallax information and a width of the view map, and is defined by 1/2 in the left / right direction about the coordinates of the step coordinate information. Way.

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