IMAGE DOWNSCALING USING PERIPHERAL VISION AREA LOCALIZATION

Methods and apparatus for representing a digital image on a display having a lower resolution than the image are disclosed. In one embodiment, a display driver maps an original bitmap onto display coordinates using two regions. The first region is a viewer's current area of interest on the display (e.g., determined by active cursor or pointer position, or by an eye tracker). This region of the original bitmap is mapped onto the display at full resolution. The remainder of the bitmap is downsampled to fit the display, and displayed on the remainder of the display. The first region is registered to the second region, such that as the viewer focuses on a new area of the display, the first region “moves” to align with the underlying downsampled image. The invention thus provides an intuitive and easy-to-use interface for viewing images on a limited-resolution display.