Full parallax integral 3d display and image processing techniques

Purpose – Full parallax integral 3D display is one of the promising future displays that provide different perspectives according to viewing direction. In this paper, the authors review the recent integral 3D display and image processing techniques for improving the performance, such as viewing resolution, viewing angle, etc. Design/methodology/approach – Firstly, to improve the viewing resolution of 3D images in the integral imaging display with lenslet array, the authors present 3D integral imaging display with focused mode using the time-multiplexed display. Compared with the original integral imaging with focused mode, the authors use the electrical masks and the corresponding elemental image set. In this system, the authors can generate the resolution-improved 3D images with the n×n pixels from each lenslet by using n×n time-multiplexed display. Secondly, a new image processing technique related to the elemental image generation for 3D scenes is presented. With the information provided by the Kinect device, the array of elemental images for an integral imaging display is generated. Findings – From their first work, the authors improved the resolution of 3D images by using the time-multiplexing technique through the demonstration of the 24 inch integral imaging system. Authors’ method can be applied to a practical application. Next, the proposed method with the Kinect device can gain a competitive advantage over other methods for the capture of integral images of big 3D scenes. The main advantage of fusing the Kinect and the integral imaging concepts is the acquisition speed, and the small amount of handled data. Originality / Value – In this paper, the authors review their recent methods related to integral 3D display and image processing technique.