Analyzing phase masks for wide étendue holographic displays

Sagi Monin, Aswin C. Sankaranarayanan, Anat Levin

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Spatial light modulator (SLM) technology forms the centerpiece of digital holographic displays. However, an inherent limitation of these devices is that their etendue, defined as the product of the display's eye box and field of view, is bounded by the number of pixel units. As a consequence, current SLMs are far from meeting the required field-of-view and eye box for the human visual system, which would require scaling the number of display units by a few orders of magnitude. Existing strategies for etendue-expansion rely on introducing a diffractive optical element (DOE), a fixed random phase mask whose pitch is much smaller than that of the original display, thereby spreading light over a wider angle. Displayed content is then optimized under perceptual constraints on the generated image. However, since the phase mask is fixed, the number of degrees of freedom does not increase and hence, the expansion in etendue necessarily comes with a loss of image quality. The tradeofts involved with such phase masks are not well understood. This paper studies the space of phase masks that can be attached to an SLM to increase its angular range. It attempts to characterize what trade-offs are involved in etendue-expansion, and whatever specific phase mask designs would support better holograms. Our theoretical results show that etendue expansion comes with a commensurate loss of contrast or resolution, depending on the specifics of the mask that we use. We show that while pseudo random masks support wide-etendue, they involve an inherent loss of contrast. Perhaps surprisingly, simple commonly-available phase masks like lenslet arrays provide near-optimal results that can largely outperform random masks.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationIEEE International Conference on Computational Photography, ICCP 2022
ISBN (Electronic)9781665458511
DOIs
StatePublished - 2022
Event14th IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography, ICCP 2022 - Pasadena, United States
Duration: 1 Aug 20225 Aug 2022

Publication series

NameIEEE International Conference on Computational Photography, ICCP 2022

Conference

Conference14th IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography, ICCP 2022
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityPasadena
Period1/08/225/08/22

Keywords

  • Etendue
  • Holographic displays
  • Spatial light modulation

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Signal Processing
  • Instrumentation
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Media Technology

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Analyzing phase masks for wide étendue holographic displays'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this