Hexagonal Pixel Image

Hi! I've been working on developping an imaging system and currently I use a square matrix (so I can simply display my image via imagec(MATRIX)). However I want to switch to hexagonal pixels for several reasons and displaying it seems to go from trivial to very difficult. I also realize that the question of pixel indicse arises but this question seems more tangible to me. If anyone has any help that would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[Sean de Wolski]

Why do you want hexagonal pixels (maybe we can provide hints toward an alternative)

How many square monitor pixels do you want to use to display one hexagonal pixel?

I would recommend, for memory/math purposes keeping a square pixel and then writing a function to display them as hexagonal if that's all you need hexagonality for.

[Karl]

The reason why I want hexagonal pixels is for increased packing density. Also my imaging system (like all others) assumes uniformity throughout the pixel and in a square pixel the distance to a corner is sqrt(2)*the distance to the centre of a side. For a hexagonal pixel this reduces to 2/sqrt(3).

What my system currently does is it raster scans through a square portion of my sample (taking one pixel every step). If I simply shift over every other row to the left or right by a half step I acquire the pixels hexagonally, which is great. The only problem is now displaying them hexagonally seems to be difficult.