Microaddressability via overscanned illumination for optical printers and the like having high gamma photosensitive recording media

Claim 1

A microaddressable display system for rendering bitmapped images on a high gamma, photosensitive recording medium: said display system comprising scanner means for exposing said recording medium to at least one radiant scan spot in accordance with a scan pattern that causes said scanner means to superimpose mulitple discrete exposures on said recording medium, along at least one axis of said scan pattern, on centers that are separated by a substantially constant pitch distance; each scan spot being focused proximate said recording medium and having an effective spatial diameter that is substantially greater than said pitch distance, whereby said scanner means overscans said recording medium; a source of grayscale data, said data being composed of sequences of high and low data values that are separated by respective boundary data values for rendering contrasting regions of an image that are spatially positioned to meet at respective transitions, with the boundary data values of said sequences being grayscale modulated in accordance with respective spatial offset values of preselected magnitude for specifying the spatial positioning of the respective transitions as a substantially linear function of the respective spatial offset values to a precision that is finer than said pitch, within a control range that is approximately equal to said pitch distance; and modulator means coupled between said data source and said scanner means for intensity modulating each scan spot in accordance with certain of said data values for rendering said image on said recording medium, such that said recording medium is exposed to intensity modulated boundary scans in response to said boundary data values to control the spatial positioning of said transitions to said precision.