Light field AR display for close-range applications: Advantages, use cases, and challenges

Light field technology revolutionizes AR displays from traditional “showing image to each eye” to “projecting light field to each retina” and resolves the vergence-accommodation conflict (VAC) to provide continuous focus and seamless integration of virtual objects with real environments. In this paper, we provide an overview of the basic principles of our light field display and demonstrate its advantages over traditional AR displays for close-range applications such as endoscopic ultrasound probe localization, AR-guided gallbladder drainage, and medical training upper endoscopy. In addition, we describe an optical approach to address the inherent spatial-angular tradeoff of light field displays.