Many people only use glasses while reading, requiring them to have a pair handy wherever they go. Since all print seems to be moving toward digital screens, there might be a way to display images that compensate for the reader’s vision and end up looking sharp and in focus. A team of researchers from UC Berkeley, MIT, and Microsoft have proposed a method of using light field displays to correct images before they reach the reader’s eyes.
The technology relies on using algorithms to pre-process an image that the screen will display. A plastic filter is set against the front of the screen with tiny holes for individual pixels to shine through. The algorithm adjusts the individual pixels to shine so that the light interaction effectively recreates what a pair of glasses would be doing. The team has so far created simulations and built a basic prototype device, but the researchers believe that this technology may be practical for “higher-order aberrations that are difficult to be corrected with glasses,” according to the study they recently released.
