Wavefront-guided integral imaging for near-eye 3D display with expanded depth of field

Conventional near-eye three-dimensional (3D) displays based on integral imaging (InI) are fundamentally limited in depth-of-field (DoF) due to discrete light-field sampling and the lack of continuous axial wavefront control. Existing strategies to extend DoF often sacrifice depth continuity, system simplicity, or real-time capability, leaving an unresolved trade-off between extended depth range and smooth depth perception. Here, we propose a wavefront-guided integral imaging (WGII) framework that integrates holographic wavefront modulation into InI to address the inherent DoF limitation. The proposed approach elevates the image source from a two-dimensional intensity distribution to a three-dimensional elemental image array (3D-EIA) with continuous axial wavefront information, enabling dense and efficient depth encoding via wavefront phase modulation and light-field pixel mapping beyond the conventional InI sampling paradigm, thereby overcoming the inherent trade-off between overall DoF and depth continuity and improving both simultaneously. The unified WGII architecture combines the advantages of holographic and light-field modulation, achieving an extended and quasi-continuous DoF while preserving the intrinsic multiview capability and motion parallax of InI. Optical experiments verify depth-resolved reconstruction over a 531 mm axial range, while numerical angular reconstruction demonstrates dense 65 × 119 viewpoint parallax, along with significantly improved depth continuity and depth range compared to conventional InI. Overall, the proposed WGII framework provides a physically grounded and experimentally feasible paradigm for reconciling extended depth representation with light-field-based near-eye displays, paving the way for next-generation high-quality 3D display applications.