Wearable light field optical see-through display to avoid user dependent calibrations: A feasibility study

Wearable augmented reality (AR) is a promising technology for surgical navigation and also for non-medical tasks. Optical see-through displays allow a direct view of the real world augmented with patient related virtual information, which is usually projected on semi-transparent displays placed in front of the eyes. A user-dependent display calibration is required to guarantee a coherent alignment between the virtual information projected on the display and the light rays of the real light field perceived by the user. Integral imaging (II) is a known approach to synthetically generate a light field. A semi-transparent mirror placed at 45° in front of an II display allows obtaining a light field see-through display. In this approach real and virtual information are perceived as coherently aligned independently to the user. In this work we used geometric optics rules to design wearable AR displays, based on II and a semi-transparent mirror, with an optimized visual quality and a tolerated range of movement of the eye in respect to the display. An early implementation demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed solution to implement optical see-through displays that not require user dependent calibrations.