Mirage claims its NanoPrism technology will alter the rice/performance of personal displays while solving the problems plaguing traditional personal displays, which include unacceptably large weight and form factor.

The company's technology is based on the principle of transforming a thin transparent plate into a complete wearable personal display system. The diffractive planar optics is combined with a microdisplay source, such as micro LCD, LCOS or OLED, to provide the users with a color video image equivalent to a 40-in. screen viewed from a distance of 7 feet.

Within the NanoPrism diffractive planar optics device, light emerging from the microdisplay source is collected by a lens and coupled into a thin transparent substrate via a nanoscale diffraction grating. The trapped light propagates within the substrate by internal reflection toward the viewer's eyes, producing a perfectly aligned image.

"Our aim is to provide a solution to meet the need for future alternative portable display systems," said Tal Cohen, CEO of Mirage Innovations. "The demand for media-capable portable devices is being fuelled by the enormous increase in content for mobileTV and Personal Media Players, which has become available only in the last couple of years."