Image edge smoothing method for light-field displays based on joint design of optical structure and elemental images

Image visual quality is of fundamental importance for three-dimensional (3D) light-field displays. The pixels of a light-field display are enlarged after the imaging of the light-field system, increasing the graininess of the image, which leads to a severe decline in the image edge smoothness as well as image quality. In this paper, a joint optimization method is proposed to minimize the "sawtooth edge" phenomenon of reconstructed images in light-field display systems. In the joint optimization scheme, neural networks are used to simultaneously optimize the point spread functions of the optical components and elemental images, and the optical components are designed based on the results. The simulations and experimental data show that a less grainy 3D image is achievable through the proposed joint edge smoothing method.