Viewing-angle and viewing-resolution enhanced integral imaging based on time-multiplexed lens stitching.

Abstract

A method for the viewing angle and viewing resolution enhancement of integral imaging (InIm) based on time-multiplexed lens stitching is demonstrated using the directional time-sequential backlight (DTS-BL) and the compound lens-array. In order to increase the lens-pitch of the compound lens-array for enlarging the viewing angle of InIm, DTS-BL is used to continuously stitch the adjacent elemental lenses in the time-multiplexed way. Through the compound lens-array with two pieces of lens in each lens unit, the parallel light beams from the DTS-BL converge and form a uniformly distributed dense point light source array (PLSA). Light rays emitting from the PLSA are modulated by the liquid crystal display (LCD) panel and then integrated as volumetric pixels of the reconstructed three-dimensional (3D) image. Meanwhile, time-multiplexed generation of the point light sources (PLSs) in the array is realized by time-multiplexed lens stitching implemented with the DTS-BL. As a result, the number of the PLSs, as the pixels of the perceived 3D image, is increased and then the viewing resolution of the 3D image is obviously enhanced. Additionally, joint optical optimization for the DTS-BL and the compound lens-array is used for suppressing the aberrations, and the imaging distortion can be decreased to 0.23% from 5.80%. In the experiment, a floating full-parallax 3D light-field image can be perceived with 4 times the viewing resolution enhancement in the viewing angle of 50°, where 7056 viewpoints are presented.