skip to main content


Title: Speckle-free holography with partially coherent light sources and camera-in-the-loop calibration
Computer-generated holography (CGH) holds transformative potential for a wide range of applications, including direct-view, virtual and augmented reality, and automotive display systems. While research on holographic displays has recently made impressive progress, image quality and eye safety of holographic displays are fundamentally limited by the speckle introduced by coherent light sources. Here, we develop an approach to CGH using partially coherent sources. For this purpose, we devise a wave propagation model for partially coherent light that is demonstrated in conjunction with a camera-in-the-loop calibration strategy. We evaluate this algorithm using light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and superluminescent LEDs (SLEDs) and demonstrate improved speckle characteristics of the resulting holograms compared with coherent lasers. SLEDs in particular are demonstrated to be promising light sources for holographic display applications, because of their potential to generate sharp and high-contrast two-dimensional (2D) and 3D images that are bright, eye safe, and almost free of speckle.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1839974
PAR ID:
10353641
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Science Advances
Volume:
7
Issue:
46
ISSN:
2375-2548
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Holographic displays promise to deliver unprecedented display capabilities in augmented reality applications, featuring a wide field of view, wide color gamut, spatial resolution, and depth cues all in a compact form factor. While emerging holographic display approaches have been successful in achieving large étendue and high image quality as seen by a camera, the large étendue also reveals a problem that makes existing displays impractical: the sampling of the holographic field by the eye pupil. Existing methods have not investigated this issue due to the lack of displays with large enough étendue, and, as such, they suffer from severe artifacts with varying eye pupil size and location. We show that the holographic field as sampled by the eye pupil is highly varying for existing display setups, and we propose pupil-aware holography that maximizes the perceptual image quality irrespective of the size, location, and orientation of the eye pupil in a near-eye holographic display. We validate the proposed approach both in simulations and on a prototype holographic display and show that our method eliminates severe artifacts and significantly outperforms existing approaches. 
    more » « less
  2. We present a foveated rendering method to accelerate the amplitude-only computer-generated hologram (AO-CGH) calculation in a holographic near-eye 3D display. For a given target image, we compute a high-resolution foveal region and a low-resolution peripheral region with dramatically reduced pixel numbers. Our technique significantly improves the computation speed of the AO-CGH while maintaining the perceived image quality in the fovea. Moreover, to accommodate the eye gaze angle change, we develop an algorithm to laterally shift the foveal image with negligible extra computational cost. Our technique holds great promise in advancing the holographic 3D display in real-time use.

     
    more » « less
  3. We introduce Michelson holography (MH), a holographic display technology that optimizes image quality for emerging holographic near-eye displays. Using two spatial light modulators (SLMs), MH is capable of leveraging destructive interference to optically cancel out undiffracted light corrupting the observed image. We calibrate this system using emerging camera-in-the-loop holography techniques and demonstrate state-of-the-art 2D and multi-plane holographic image quality.

     
    more » « less
  4. Abstract

    Emissive displays based on light‐emitting diodes (LEDs), with high pixel density, luminance, efficiency, and large color gamut, are of great interest for applications such as watches, phones, and virtual displays. The high pixel density requirements of some emissive displays require a particular class of LEDs that are sub‐20‐micrometers in length, called micro‐LEDs. While state‐of‐the‐art emissive displays incorporate organic LEDs, an alternative is inorganic III‐nitride LEDs with potential reliability and efficiency benefits. Here we explore the performance, challenges, and prospective outcomes for III‐nitride micro‐LEDs to produce efficient emissive displays and provide insight to advance this technology. Calculations are performed to determine the operating points for the micro‐LEDs and the efficiency of the overall emissive display. It is shown that III‐nitride micro‐LEDs suffer from some of the same problems as their larger‐sized solid‐state lighting LED cousins; however, the operating conditions of micro‐LEDs can result in different challenges and research efforts. These challenges include improving efficiency at low current densities; improving the efficiency of longer wavelength (green and red) LEDs; and creating device designs that can overcome low coupling efficiency, high surface recombination, and display assembly difficulties.

     
    more » « less
  5. Holographic near-eye displays promise unprecedented capabilities for virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) systems. The image quality achieved by current holographic displays, however, is limited by the wave propagation models used to simulate the physical optics. We propose a neural network-parameterized plane-to-multiplane wave propagation model that closes the gap between physics and simulation. Our model is automatically trained using camera feedback and it outperforms related techniques in 2D plane-to-plane settings by a large margin. Moreover, it is the first network-parameterized model to naturally extend to 3D settings, enabling high-quality 3D computer-generated holography using a novel phase regularization strategy of the complex-valued wave field. The efficacy of our approach is demonstrated through extensive experimental evaluation with both VR and optical see-through AR display prototypes. 
    more » « less