Integral imaging system featuring a seamlessly extended depth of field

An integral imaging display system, incorporating three birefringence lens arrays (BLAs) paired with a half‐wave plate (HWP), is proposed to accomplish a seamlessly extended depth of field.The BLAs were built by injecting three different types of liquid crystal into the space between the lens array substrate and glass substrate, and they act either as a concave lens, convex lens, or a transmissive plain homogeneous medium, depending on the light polarization. The HWP is used to adaptively control the polarization of the light impinging on each of the BLAs, to ensure that one of them acts as a concave/convex lens, whereas the others act as a transmissive plain medium. The three BLAs were appropriately aligned to extend the entire depth of field substantially. Consequently, the feasibility of the proposed display system was verified theoretically and experimentally. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 54:1705–1711, 2012; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.26896