Correcting for Optical Aberrations using Multilayer Displays

Figure 1: Correcting presbyopia using multilayer displays. A presbyopic individual observes a watch held at a distance of 45 cm. Due to the limited range of accommodation, the watch appears out of focus. To read the watch, corrective eyewear (e.g., bifocals) must be worn with a +2.50 diopter spherical lens. (Left) As a substitute for eyewear, we observe that the watch can be modified to use a multilayer display, containing two semi-transparent, light-emitting panels. The images displayed on these layers are pre-filtered such that the watch face appears in focus when viewed by the defocused eye. (Right) From left to right along the top row: the perceived image of the watch using a conventional display (e.g., an unmodified LCD), using prior single-layer pre-filtering methods, and using the proposed mutlilayer pre-filtering method. Corresponding images of the displayed watch face are shown along the bottom row. Two-layer pre-filtering, while increasing the thickness by 6 mm in this example, enhances contrast and eliminates ringing artifacts, as compared to prior single-layer pre-filtering methods.