Wide-angle, off-axis, see-through head-mounted display

A 60-deg-field-of-view optical see-through head-mounted display (HMD) using off-axis optics has been designed for 3-D medical imaging visualization. T wo basic on-axis optical design concepts for see-though HMDs are reviewed f irst, to motivate the design of an off-axis optical form. An off-axis desig n is then presented. Because HMDs are typically designed from the pupil of the eye to the miniature display, it is common to assess final performance according to the display characteristics. Such analysis, however, does not provide information that is easily translated into task-based performance m etric. Therefore, we present an analysis of the performance of the design f rom a usability viewpoint. For this analysis, the optical system is ray-tra ced from the display to the eye. Three key measures of performance-accommod ation, astigmatism, and chromatic blur-are presented over the field of rega rd using customized graphical output, (C) 2000 Society of Photo-Optical Ins trumentation Engineers. [S0091-3286(00)00107-0].