The OSA conference on “3D Image Acquisition and Display: Technology, Perception and Applications” was part of the OSA Imaging and Applied Optics Congress, which was held virtually in 22-26, June 2020. This Optics Express feature issue on “3D Image Acquisition and Display: Technology, Perception and Applications” is organized in conjunction with this OSA 3D conference. This scope and topics of this feature issue and the 3D conference meeting cover research areas related to the acquisition, processing, display, and applications of 3D information as well as the perception, human factors, and visual comfort of 3D information displays. While the meeting participants were particularly encouraged to submit their work, this feature issue was open to all contributions in related areas. The goal of this feature issue is to bring together contributions by outstanding international leaders, researchers, and engineers from a broad range of interdisciplinary fields to present their work in the science, technology, and applications of 3D image collection, processing, and display technologies.

Research related to scientific understanding of 3D information display and perception, technological innovation on 3D image acquisition or display methods, and task-specific design and applications of 3D acquisition or display technology are particular high lights of this feature issue. The feature issue covers hardware, algorithms, devices, and systems for 3D imaging, 3D visualization, augmented reality displays, 3D displays, and biomedical applications in these domains. This feature issue presents recent developments, as well as the challenges facing 3D imaging, visualization, and display systems. We hope that the readers will enjoy this issue containing 29 high quality articles that highlight the state of the art in the 3D field [1–29]. We are also thankful to all of the authors and reviewers for their fine contributions. Also, we thank Ms. Carmelita Washington from the Optics Express Manuscript Office for her assistance and support during the manuscript review process of the feature issue. We appreciate the opportunity provided to us to organize this feature issue and thank the Editor in Chief James Leger and Senior Deputy Editor Chris Dainty.

In the following, we provide a summary of these 29 articles that appear in the feature issue [1–29]. The presentation follows the appearance of these manuscripts on the Optics Express Virtual Feature WEB site (https://www.osapublishing.org/oe/virtual_issue.cfm?vid=474).

G. Scrofani et. al. report a protocol that takes advantage of the Fourier lightfield microscopy concept for providing 3D darkfield images of volumetric samples in a single-shot [1]. J. Yeom et. al., propose a pre-compensated recording process of holographic optical element (HOE) lenses, where both of reference and signal waves have spherical wavefronts, for solving a wavelength mismatch problem between the recording and displaying process [2]. C. Mu et al, propose the idea of combining the holographic device and a combiner, resulting in a see-through holographic display [3].

A. Ahar et al, present a public subjectively-annotated holographic data set that allows for testing the performance of compression techniques and quality metrics, in addition to a subjective visual quality assessment methodology [4]. H. Deng et al propose a 2D/3D mixed frontal projection system that mainly contains a liquid crystal micro-lens array and a quarter-wave retarding film with pinholes [5]. P. Kilcullen et al, report camera-free three-dimensional dual photography inspired by the linkage between fringe projection profilometry and dual photography [6]. J. Lee et al, explore the feasibility of implementing stereoscopy-based 3D images with an eye-tracking-based light-field display and actual head-up display optics for automotive applications [7].

B. Javidi et al., present a Roadmap on 3D integral imaging to provide an overview of some of the research activities in the field and discuss various aspects of the field including sensing of 3D scenes, processing of captured information, and 3D display and visualization of information [8]. S. Yoshida proposes a method to construct a virtual annular projector array that acts as numerous light sources to produce 360°-viewable 3D images on a round table [9]. Y. Yahagi et al, proposes a method of suppressing degradations which appear as high-frequency noise in dihedral corner reflector arrays by using mechanical vibration [10].

T. O’Connor et al., present rapid cell identification in a compact and field-portable system employing single random phase encoding to record opto-biological signatures of living biological cells of interest classified by convolutional neural network [11]. N. Li et al., present a curved composite hologram generation method with suppressed speckle noise [12]. Y. Guan et al., report a highly parallel multi-view polygon rasterization algorithm for 3D multi-view image generation [13].

C. Gao et al., propose a novel optical reverse mapping (ORM) method and an ORM criterion to evaluate the relevance between the directional backlight 3D light-field display system aberration and the crosstalk [14]. J. Rapp et al, describe an implementation of subtractively-dithered single photon lidar that can recover high-resolution depth estimates despite the coarse resolution of the detector [15]. Q. Wang et al, propose the novel concept of an ultra-thin, wide-angle, stray-light-free, optical see-through near-eye display (NED) with a dual-layer geometrical waveguide [16].

N. Kawagishi et al., propose a method for measuring the modulation transfer function of an aerial imaging system based on the slanted knife edge method [17]. C. Mu et. al., propose a novel architecture for head-up displays to make the image distance continuously tunable by exploiting the merit of both holographic and geometrical imaging [18]. I. Chavarría et al, propose an interactive optical 3D-touch user interface by using a holographic light-field 3D display and a color detection system of the scattered light from the touched 3D image [19].

M. Xu et al., present a generalized analytical model for accurately simulating the visual responses such as retinal PSF, MTF, and image formation of different types of 2D and 3D display systems [20]. Z. Song et al, develop an advanced fusion strategy for the reconstruction of complex objects in micrometer-level 3D measurement by stripe-based structured light [21].

R. Joshi et. al., propose signal detection in a turbid medium using temporally encoded single shot polarimetric integral imaging [22]. C. Xu et. al., propose a novel iterative algorithm for sparse-view cone beam computed tomography reconstruction based on the weighted Schatten p-norm minimization [23]. S. Cholewiak et al., combine optical and perceptual data to characterize an example perceptual eyebox for display visibility in augmented reality [24].

T. Le Deun, et al., propose micro structuring of 3D movie theater metallic screens to improve radiant intensity homogeneity and reduce crosstalk [25]. C. Martinez et al., present the development of a 360° volumetric display based on the use of a transparent projection surface [26]. X. Lee et al., propose a novel raster scanning tomographic imaging device that acquires simultaneous large field-of-view Scheimpflug and high-resolution spectral domain optical coherence tomography using the same illuminating photons [27].

Y. Li et al., present a fast hologram generation method based on the optimal segmentation of a sub-computer-generated-hologram [28]. Y. Chang et al., demonstrate a platform based on a metalens on a 2D array of switchable silicon microring emitters which enables scalable, efficient, and compact devices that steer in two dimensions using a single wavelength [29].