Design of an optical see-through light-field near-eye display using a discrete lenslet array

In this paper, we propose a novel method to construct an optical see-through light-field near-eye display (OST LF-NED) by using a discrete lenslet array (DLA). The DLA is used as a spatial light modulator (SLM) to generate dense light field of three-dimensional (3-D) scenes inside the user's eyebox of the system and provide correct focus cues to the user. A corresponding light-field image rendering method is also proposed and demonstrated. The light emitted from the real objects passes through the transparent region of the display panel and the planar area of the DLA successively without redirection, so the user can have a clear view of the real scene as well as the virtual information. The stray light that may degrade the image quality has been analyzed in detail. The experimental result shows that the proposed method is capable of obtaining a corrected depth perception of the virtual information in augmented reality (AR) applications.