Maxwellian near-eye display with correct focusing and defocusing cues based on light field refocusing technology

Abstract

The Maxwellian near-eye displays have the feature of always being in focus leading to the lack of correct depth cues, which makes human eyes cannot really perceive the actual position of the virtual image in space. In this paper, we proposed a Maxwellian near-eye display with the correct focusing and defocusing cues based on light field refocusing technology. The proposed system mainly consists of an optometric device, a laser projector, and a Lens Holographic Optical Element (LHOE). The proposed system uses optometric device to detect the human eye focused at different distances in real-time. The refocused images containing the focusing and defocusing information are generated by using the light field refocusing technology. The refocused images are matched with the focusing depth of human eyes, so as to restore the accommodation response of Maxwellian near-eye display. According to the specific position of human eyes, a lens holographic optical element is used to focus the refocusing image onto the retina to realize the perfect fusion of virtual images and the real environment. A proof-of-concept prototype based on the proposed structure is developed, and it presents Maxwellian near-eye display effects with correct focusing and defocusing cues.