Artifact-Resilient Real-Time Holography

Holographic near-eye displays promise unparalleled depth cues, high-resolution imagery, and realistic three-dimensional parallax at a compact form factor, making them promising candidates for emerging augmented and virtual reality systems. However, existing holographic display methods often assume ideal viewing conditions and overlook real-world factors such as eye floaters and eyelashes—obstructions that can severely degrade perceived image quality. In this work, we propose a new metric that quantifies hologram resilience to artifacts and apply it to computer generated holography (CGH) optimization. We call this Artifact Resilient Holography (ARH). We begin by introducing a simulation method that models the effects of pre- and post-pupil obstructions on holographic displays. Our analysis reveals that eyebox regions dominated by low frequencies—produced especially by the smooth-phase holograms broadly adopted in recent holography work—are vulnerable to visual degradation from dynamic obstructions such as floaters and eyelashes. In contrast, random phase holograms spread energy more uniformly across the eyebox spectrum, enabling them to diffract around obstructions without producing prominent artifacts. By characterizing a random phase eyebox using the Rayleigh Distribution, we derive a differentiable metric in the eyebox domain. We then apply this metric to train a real-time neural network-based phase generator, enabling it to produce artifact-resilient 3D holograms that preserve visual fidelity across a range of practical viewing conditions—enhancing both robustness and user interactivity.