Figure with three captions and I only want one of them to appear in the list of figures

Question

I have a figure that occupies three pages. It is made up of subfigures. The caption of the three figures must be the same. This is an example:

Note that each figure appears in a different page.

As expected, the list of figures will display de following:

1 This is a caption. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1 This is a caption. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1 This is a caption. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

This is where the question arises: how can I prevent the same figure from appearing three times in the list of figures? Indexing the figure on the first page would be enough.

Here is a complete example:

\documentclass{article}
    \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
    \usepackage[labelformat=simple]{subcaption}
    \renewcommand\thesubfigure{(\alph{subfigure})}
    \usepackage{graphicx}
    \title{Example}

\newcommand\metric[1]{\ensuremath{\text{metric}\paren{#1}}}

\begin{document}

\maketitle

\listoffigures

\section{Introduction}


 \begin{figure}[htb]
    \centering
    \begin{subfigure}[b]{\textwidth}
        \centering
        \includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{example-image-a}
        \caption*{\hfil \textit{continued on the next page}}
     \end{subfigure}
          \caption{This is a caption.}
\end{figure}
    %
\begin{figure}[htb]\ContinuedFloat
    \centering
    \begin{subfigure}[b]{\textwidth}
         \centering
         \includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{example-image-b}
                 \caption*{\hfil \textit{continued on the next page}}
     \end{subfigure}
          \caption{This is a caption.}
          \end{figure}
    %
    \begin{figure}[htb]\ContinuedFloat
        \centering
     \begin{subfigure}[tb]{\textwidth}
         \centering
         \includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{example-image-c}
     \end{subfigure}
          \caption{This is a caption.}
    \label{fig:label}
\end{figure}



\end{document}

Answer 1

You can add an empty optional parameters to \caption, such as \caption[]{This is a caption.}. And there is no need to use subfigure.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{caption}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\title{Example}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\listoffigures
\section{Introduction}
\begin{figure}[htb]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{example-image-a}
{\mbox{}\hfill\textit{continued on the next page}\hskip1cm}
\caption{This is a caption.}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}[htb]\ContinuedFloat
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{example-image-b}
{\mbox{}\hfill\textit{continued on the next page}\hskip1cm}
\caption[]{This is a caption.}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}[htb]\ContinuedFloat
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{example-image-c}
\caption[]{This is a caption.}
\label{fig:label}
\end{figure}
\end{document}