Design of discretely depth-varying holographic grating for image guide based see-through and near-to-eye displays.

For the see-through and near-to-eye displays, light throughput and uniformity of luminance over the field of view are improved by employing an optical image guide with discretely depth-varying surface relief holographic gratings. In the design process, a newly developed mathematical model, in conjunction with rigorous coupled wave analysis of diffraction efficiency, eliminates massive and time consuming iteration of non-sequential ray tracing but rapidly identifies the depth-varying structure and optimum optical performance. The depth-varying grating based approach achieved a 1.