Tokyo - Japanese cellphones already let users shoot films and share them with friends. It may not be long before the images go another step - becoming completely three-dimensional.

Japan's Hitachi, Ltd has developed a lightweight 3D display that can potentially be adapted for mobile devices such as telephones.

The gadget, using what is known as stereoscopic vision display, weighs only one kilogram and resembles an upside-down, multiangular pyramid full of mirrors on top of a liquid crystal display.

"It's very small and portable," Rieko Otsuka of Hitachi's Advanced Research Laboratory said on Tuesday.

Taking advantage of the portability of the display, the company expects it can be put to use to show museum pieces at schools so they will appear as if they are standing up right in front of students.

Otsuka expects to put the device to further use.

"I'd like to see the technology eventually applied to mobile phones, so people could see images three-dimensionally from their handsets," she said.