Multi-view image multiplexing with compensation of lens misalignment and inhomogeneity for 3D lenticular display

Abstract

Autostereoscopic display systems provide real 3D images to a viewer without wearing glasses. Among them, the lenticular display system is one of the most popular because it can be easily manufactured, provide high brightness, and generate multiple views. For N-view lenticular display, N view images are multiplexed to generate a multi-view image. Then, the generated image is allocated to the LCD pixel array. A practical lenticular display system may not provide satisfactory 3D display quality. This quality degradation is mainly due to the problems related with the design and attachment of lenticular sheet. Intrinsically, the system is designed to provide the best display quality only when a viewer locates at the optimal viewing distance. Extrinsically, precise alignment of a lenticular sheet on the LCD panel may not be practically achievable in manufacturing the system, and the lenticular sheet may be inhomogeneous if the pitch of the lenticular sheet is very narrow for the LCD panel with high resolution. These problems causes mismatch between the lenticular sheet and sub-pixels on the LCD panel, thereby an observed 3D image inevitably produces undesirable distortion. In this thesis, we propose two methods for multiplexing appropriate multi-view images, in order to compensate the problems mentioned above. The first method predicts the unknown geometric relationship between the lenticular sheet and LCD sub-pixels by examining pattern images. And, by analyzing the geometric relationship, it describes the image to be observed at each viewing zone in terms of LCD sub-pixels, hardware parameters, and viewer’s eye position. Then, it obtains sub-pixel values to be allocated at the LCD panel by minimizing the distortion between the observed and original view images. Meanwhile, the second method directly predicts the contribution of LCD sub-pixels to each viewing zone based on the measured relationship between the LCD sub-pixels and the lenticular sheet. Then, it gen...