Stereograms
Bringing 19th-century stereo photography into the 21st century
Hundreds of thousands of “stereoscopic views”, like the stereocard above, have been digitized and are available in libraries and archives across the world. However, it is virtually impossible to view these amazing images in “3D” as originally intended.
The slight difference between the stereo pairs are recreated as a single image with binocular depth in the stereoviewer.
The goal of this project is to make these remarkable artifacts widely accessible in the 21st century.
Below is a 3D photogrammetric model of the above image. See if you can reorient the model to recreate the image:
To solve this problem, we have created a stereogram viewer for virtual reality headsets. Using VR allows for many significant advantages. Images may be digitally combined, edited, enhanced and interacted with in ways previously impossible. Below are two anatomical collections brought into VR for Vanderbilt’s participation in the Thinking 3D global exposition.
Edinburgh Stereoscopic Atlas of Anatomy, 1895-1905. Vanderbilt Library, Special Collections.
Bassett Collection of Stereoscopic Images of Human Anatomy, 1962. Stanford Medical Library
Coming soon, we will release from alpha a VR stereo viewer able to access online stereogram archives. We have developed a machine learning algorithm to segment the stereopairs, and a pipeline and interface to host, view, and display these images in virtual reality. Publicly available images can be found in the New York Public Library or Library of Congress collections.
Stereograms from the US Civil War. Images appear with stereoscopic depth in the VR headset. Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views, New York Public Library Digital Collection.