Hoonjong Kang

State of the Art in Holographic Displays: A Survey

True-3D imaging and display systems are based on physical duplication of light distribution. Holography is a true-3D technique. There are significant developments in electro-holographic displays in recent years. Liquid crystal, liquid crystal on silicon, optically addressed, mirror-based, holographic polymer-dispersed, and acousto-optic devices are used as holographic displays. There are complete electro-holographic display systems and some of them are already commercialized.

Real-time phase-only color holographic video display system using LED illumination

A real-time full-color phase-only holographic display system generates holograms of 3D objects. The system includes a 3D object formed by voxels, an internet-based transmission capability that transmits the object information to the server, a real-time hologram generation unit, and a holographic display unit with incoherent illumination. The server calculates three phase holograms for RGB components using multiple GPUs. The resultant phase holograms are saved into an RGB bitmap image and loaded to the phase-only spatial light modulators (SLMs). SLMs are illuminated uniformly by LEDs, and reconstructed waves are aligned and overlapped by using high precision optics and stages. Experimental results are satisfactory.

Circular holographic video display system

A circular holographic video display system reconstructs holographic video. Phase-only spatial light modulators are tiled in a circular configuration in order to increase the field of view. A beam-splitter is used to align the active area of the SLMs side by side without any gap. With the help of this configuration observers can see 3D ghost-like image floating in space and can move and rotate around the object. The 3D reconstructions can be observed binocularly. Experimental results are satisfactory.

Digital Holographic Three-Dimensional Video Displays

Holography aims to record and regenerate volume filling light fields to reproduce ghost-like 3-D images that are optically indistinguishable from their physical 3-D originals. Digital holographic video displays are pixelated devices on which digital holograms can be written at video rates. Spatial light modulators (SLMs) are used for such purposes in practice; even though it is desirable to have SLMs that can modulate both the phase and amplitude of the incident light at each pixel, usually amplitude-only or phase-only SLMs are available. Many laboratories have reported working prototypes using different designs. Size and resolution of the SLMs are quite demanding for satisfactory 3-D reconstructions. Space-bandwidth product (SBP) seems like a good metric for quality analysis. Even though moderate SBP is satisfactory for a stationary observer with no lateral or rotational motion, the required SBP quickly increases when such motion is allowed. Multi-SLM designs, especially over curved surfaces, relieve high bandwidth requirements, and therefore, are strong candidates for futuristic holographic video displays. Holograms are quite robust to noise and quantization. It is demonstrated that either laser or light-emitting diode (LED) illumination is feasible. Current research momentum is increasing with many exciting and encouraging results.

Graphics processing unit accelerated computation of digital holograms

An approximation for fast digital hologram generation is implemented on a central processing unit (CPU), a graphics processing unit (GPU), and a multi-GPU computational platform. The computational performance of the method on each platform is measured and compared. The computational speed on the GPU platform is much faster than on a CPU, and the algorithm could be further accelerated on a multi-GPU platform. In addition, the accuracy of the algorithm for single- and double-precision arithmetic is evaluated. The quality of the reconstruction from the algorithm using single-precision arithmetic is comparable with the quality from the double-precision arithmetic, and thus the implementation using single-precision arithmetic on a multi-GPU platform can be used for holographic video displays.

Speckle-free digital holographic recording of a diffusely reflecting object

We demonstrate holographic recording without speckle noise using the digital holographic technique called optical scanning holography (OSH). First, we record a complex hologram of a diffusely reflecting (DR) object using OSH. The incoherent mode of OSH makes it possible to record the complex hologram without speckle noise. Second, we convert the complex hologram to an off-axis real hologram digitally and finally we reconstruct the real hologram using an amplitude-only spatial light modulator (SLM) without twin-image noise and speckle noise. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time demonstrating digital holographic recording of a DR object without speckle noise.

Acceleration method of computing a compensated phase-added stereogram on a graphic processing unit.

We have implemented experimental code to compute a compensated phase-added stereogram (CPAS), which was proposed in a previous paper, on a graphic processing unit (GPU). In this paper, we show an acceleration method for CPAS computation by means of the GPU and compare the computation time between CPU-based and GPU-based calculations, which are programmed in our laboratories. In addition, we demonstrate their reconstructed images. As a result, we could achieve a performance gain of a factor of over 33 compared with a CPU-based computing environment and digital holograms can be displayed at 30 frames per second with 15,000 points.

Compensated phase-added stereogram for real-time holographic display

A common difficulty in displaying a Fresnel hologram in real time the required calculation of huge amounts of information. We propose a novel digital hologram generation method for real-time holographic display. It depends on compensation of the phase-added stereogram, and can generate high-quality holograms rapidly. We describe a generation algorithm for the phase-added stereogram, using the fast Fourier transform (FFT) for fast calculation, and the compensated phase-added stereogram to get a reconstructed image as clear as the Fresnel hologram. Moreover, we present a method to define the optimum size of segmentation to get a clear reconstruction image and to achieve fast computation using the FFT. We have built a demonstration system to implement the proposed method. The system consists of a server, a client, and an optical holographic display system for real-time holographic display. The server generates 3-D information and transmits it on Ethernet. The client receives the information and generates a digital hologram using the compensated phase-added stereogram. Finally, the generated hologram is displayed on the optical holographic display system in real time. We have achieved display of digital holograms at 15 frames/s with 1000 object points.

Seamless full color holographic printing method based on spatial partitioning of SLM

The holographic wavefront printer decodes the wavefront coming from a three-dimensional object from a computer generated hologram displayed on a spatial light modulator. By recording this wavefront as an analog volume hologram this printing method is highly suitable for realistic color 3D imaging. We propose in the paper spatial partitioning of the spatial light modulator to perform mosaic delivery of exposures at primary colors for seamless reconstruction of a white light viewable color hologram. The method is verified for a 3 × 3 color partitioning scheme by a wavefront printer with demagnification of the light beam diffracted from the modulator.

Fast phase-added stereogram algorithm for generation of photorealistic 3D content

A new phase-added stereogram algorithm for accelerated computation of holograms from a point cloud model is proposed. The algorithm relies on the hologram segmentation, sampling of directional information, and usage of the fast Fourier transform with a finer grid in the spatial frequency domain than is provided by the segment size. The algorithm gives improved quality of reconstruction due to new phase compensation introduced in the segment fringe patterns. The result is finer beam steering leading to high peak intensity and a large peak signal-to-noise ratio in reconstruction. The feasibility of the algorithm is checked by the generation of 3D contents for a color wavefront printer.