Integral Imaging-Based Light Field Display System With Optimum Voxel Space

Integral imaging (InIm) based light field display (LFD) is still faced with challenges in the complexity of light field data acquisition and generation and unsatisfactory display effects. This paper presents an InIm-based LFD system with an optimum voxel space. The study's main innovation lies in two aspects: Firstly, it reveals the intrinsic voxel spatial distribution of the InIm-based LFD and analyzes how the voxel space affects the display performances such as spatial resolution, depth of field, and smoothness of parallax. Secondly, it proposes a method to generate an elemental image array (EIA) from a pair of RGB and depth (RGBD) images based on the optimally selected voxel space. In the experiments, we tested the display performances of the voxels on different depth planes and obtained results consistent with the theoretical analyses. We also experimented with a computer 3D model and a real-world scene on two InIm-based LFD prototypes working in different modes, one in real mode and the other in virtual mode, and obtained favorable 3D display effects. The proposed system has a simple and compact hardware structure and has shown flexibility and scalability in the aspect of light field data acquisition. Also, it applies to various 3D scenes, either virtual models or realistic objects. We expect the proposed system to help the practical application of InIm-based LFD technology.