at h u2266 20 it is necessary to define a relationship between h and d assuming that ten optical elements 4 of a regular hexagon shape contribute to the point a as shown in fig6 it can be known from the formulas 1 2 6 and fig4 that the following formula 4 stands it can be known from the formula 4 that the following formula 5 is satisfied it can be understood from these points that if luminance distributions of light emitted from the light sources 3 are superposed one upon another a luminance at a darkest point between adjacent light sources 3 becomes equal to a peak luminance it is therefore possible to thin the image display apparatus and make uniform the luminance of a displayed image an optical film an optical sheet a prism sheet or the like having optical diffusion characteristics may be disposed between the light sources 3 and a light exposure plane of the liquid crystal panel 1 specific embodiments of the image display apparatus will be described on the basis of the above described points the first embodiment will be described with reference to fig7 fig7 is a cross sectional view taken along line x x u2032 shown in fig2 a and 2b referring to fig7 an image display apparatus is constituted of a liquid crystal panel 1 an optical unit 2 light sources 3 for radiating light an optical element 4 an optical guide portion 5 a light source concave recess 6 an optical uniformizing portion 7 a total reflection portion 8 a first optical diffusion unit 9 and a parallelizing unit 10 referring to fig7 the total reflection portion 8 is disposed above the light sources 3 and the first optical diffusion unit 9 is disposed at.