Gaze-Contingent Retinal Speckle Suppression for Perceptually-Matched Foveated Holographic Displays

TL;DR

This paper introduces a gaze-contingent hologram optimization method that reduces perceived speckle noise by considering human visual sensitivity and retinal characteristics, enhancing holographic display quality.

Contribution

It is the first to incorporate human visual system characteristics and retinal point spread functions into hologram computation for speckle noise reduction.

Findings

Significant reduction in perceived speckle noise in holographic displays.

Enhanced perceptual quality demonstrated through objective and subjective evaluations.

Method adaptable to individual retinal aberrations.

Abstract

Computer-generated holographic (CGH) displays show great potential and are emerging as the next-generation displays for augmented and virtual reality, and automotive heads-up displays. One of the critical problems harming the wide adoption of such displays is the presence of speckle noise inherent to holography, that compromises its quality by introducing perceptible artifacts. Although speckle noise suppression has been an active research area, the previous works have not considered the perceptual characteristics of the Human Visual System (HVS), which receives the final displayed imagery. However, it is well studied that the sensitivity of the HVS is not uniform across the visual field, which has led to gaze-contingent rendering schemes for maximizing the perceptual quality in various computer-generated imagery. Inspired by this, we present the first method that reduces the "perceived speckle noise" by integrating foveal and peripheral vision characteristics of the HVS, along with the retinal point spread function, into the phase hologram computation. Specifically, we introduce the anatomical and statistical retinal receptor distribution into our computational hologram optimization, which places a higher priority on reducing the perceived foveal speckle noise while being adaptable to any individual's optical aberration on the retina. Our method demonstrates superior perceptual quality on our emulated holographic display. Our evaluations with objective measurements and subjective studies demonstrate a significant reduction of the human perceived noise.