Integral volumetric imaging with high resolution and smooth motion parallax

Abstract

This paper proposes a high resolution integral imaging system using a lens array composed of non-uniform decentered elemental lenses. One of the problems of integral imaging is the trade-off relationship between the resolution and the number of views. When the number of views is small, motion parallax becomes strongly discrete to maintain the viewing angle. The only conventional way to solve this problem is to use a finer lens array and a display panel with a finer pixel pitch. In the proposed method large display area is used to show a smaller and finer 3D image. To realize it, the elemental lenses should be smaller than the elemental lenses. To cope with the difference of sizes between the elemental images and the elemental lenses, the lens array is designed so that the optical centers of elemental lenses are located in the centers of elemental images, not in the centers of elemental lenses. In addition, new image rendering algorithm is developed so that undistorted 3D image can be presented with a non-uniform lens array. The proposed design of lens array can be applied to integral volumetric imaging, where display panels are layered to show volumetric images in the scheme of integral imaging.