SBIR/STTR Award attributes
Soliddd has patented the only single-element light-field lens. It can be used both for capture and display of volumetric images in full focus, no matter the viewer's vision quality, and at infinity. The lens is a plenoptic, integral imaging, tiled structure, a multiple-lens array which can fit directly over an underlying display or sensor, or at some distance from either sensor (or an array of sensors) or display (or an array of displays). Previous light-field lens systems have involved multiple lens elements, typically with the element closest to the display or sensor being a microlens array. Some alternatively make use of pinhole arrays. Pinholes and microlenses have the widely recognized benefits of allowing images to be viewed in full focus with very wide depth of field. However, a relatively large area of the light entering each microlens or pinhole is subject to spherical and chromatic aberration. This can be somewhat corrected by placing focusing lenses over the microlens or pinhole array, thus leading to a multiple element structure but losing some essential benefits of a single element structure. Instead, Soliddd uses larger diameter lenses in its light-field array, to minimize the overall portion of the image that is distorted; however, we still need to keep the lens diameter small enough so that it is less than the typical human pupil. In so doing, light from the lens passes through the pupil unaffected by the eye's natural lens and images directly on the retina. Soliddd's software organizes the images from each tile in the display so that they are coordinated into a single combined image as seen by the viewer. A large part of the overall image seen by the user comes from whatever lenslet in the array is central to the user's visual field, with may other tiny portions of the seen image supplied by neighboring lenslets in the array. If the eye can be tracked accurately, then this arrangement will allow for a very highly efficient form of foveated rendering with the promise of a far more efficient data rate to the display similar to severe image compression but with no apparent information loss; this efficiency will also allow a great decrease in power requirements for image processing. However, these benefits rely on accurate gaze tracking, which is not now available. But Soliddd's lens system can also be used to greatly improve gaze tracking. When used with a sensor, the array of spherical lenses in full focus allow for capture of infinite intersection points for light rays entering the sensor, limited only by sensor resolution. Therefore the capture of volumetric information is vastly improved, which would allow for rapidly attained, accurate location data for the pupil and much improved gaze tracking. Various slices of the volumetric data obtained when using the lens system for capture could also train multiple photosites on the same point in space, then multiplying low-light information from a full-color sensor, or selecting information on an angular plane vis a vis the camera, this capturing a digitally synthesized pan or tilt. Many other data slices are also made possible.
