Shouping Nie

Speckle reduced lensless holographic projection from phase-only computer-generated hologram

This paper presents a method for the implementation of speckle reduced lensless holographic projection based on phase-only computer-generated hologram (CGH). The CGH is calculated from the image by double-step Fresnel diffraction. A virtual convergence light is imposed to the image to ensure the focusing of its wavefront to the virtual plane, which is established between the image and the hologram plane. The speckle noise is reduced due to the reconstruction of the complex amplitude of the image via a lensless optical filtering system. Both simulation and optical experiments are carried out to confirm the feasibility of the proposed method. Furthermore, the size of the projected image can reach to the maximum diffraction bandwidth of the spatial light modulator (SLM) at a given distance. The method is effective for improving the image quality as well as the image size at the same time in compact lensless holographic projection system.

Propagation evolution of an off-axis high-order cylindrical vector beam

The propagation characteristics of an off-axis high-order cylindrical vector beam (OHCVB) are studied in this paper. The analytic expressions for the electric field and intensity distribution of the OHCVB propagating in free space are presented, to our knowledge for the first time. The transverse intensity of the OHCVB, different from that of the input Gaussian beam, does not have an axially symmetric distribution, owing to a slight dislocation between the polarization singularity located in the vector field generator and the center point of the Gaussian beam. Numerical results show that the intensity distribution during propagation strongly depends on the propagation distance, dislocation displacement, and topological charge. Accompanied by beam expansion, the intensity distribution of the OHCVB tends to eventually become steady, and the dark core of the vector beam will disappear gradually during the process of propagation. Moreover, with the increase of the topological charge, more energy will be transferred from the x axis to the y axis, and the annular intensity is split into two parts along the y-axis direction. The results help us to investigate the dynamic propagation behaviors of the HCVB under the off-axis condition and also guide the calibration of the off-axis high-order cylindrical vector field in practice.

Generation of optical vortex array along arbitrary curvilinear arrangement

We propose an approach for creating optical vortex array (OVA) arranged along arbitrary curvilinear path, based on the coaxial interference of two width-controllable component curves calculated by modified holographic beam shaping technique. The two component curve beams have different radial dimensions as well as phase gradients along each beam such that the number of phase singularity in the curvilinear arranged optical vortex array (CA-OVA) is freely tunable on demand. Hybrid CA-OVA that comprises of multiple OVA structures along different respective curves is also discussed and demonstrated. Furthermore, we study the conversion of CA-OVA into vector mode that comprises of polarization vortex array with varied polarization state distribution. Both simulation and experimental results prove the performance of the proposed method of generating a complex structured vortex array, which is of significance for potential applications including multiple trapping of micro-sized particles.

Single-exposure color digital holography

In this paper, we report a method for color image reconstruction by recording only one single multi-wavelength hologram. In the recording process, three lasers of different wavelengths emitting in the red, green and blue regions are used for illuminating on the object and the object diffraction fields will arrive at the hologram plane simultaneously. Three reference beams with different spatial angles will interfere with the corresponding object diffraction fields on the hologram plane, respectively. Finally, a series of sub-holograms incoherently overlapped on the CCD to be recorded as a multi-wavelength hologram. Angular division multiplexing is employed to reference beams so that the spatial spectra of the multiple recordings will be separated in the Fourier plane. In the reconstruction process, the multi-wavelength hologram will be Fourier transformed into its Fourier plane, where the spatial spectra of different wavelengths are separated and can be easily extracted by employing frequency filtering. The extracted spectra are used to reconstruct the corresponding monochromatic complex amplitudes, which will be synthesized to reconstruct the color image. For singleexposure recording technique, it is convenient for applications on the real-time image processing fields. However, the quality of the reconstructed images is affected by speckle noise. How to improve the quality of the images needs for further research.

Anisotropic edge enhancement with spiral zone plate under femtosecond laser illumination

Fractional and de-centered phase spiral zone plates (SZPs) are proposed for anisotropic edge enhancement using a femtosecond laser. The transmission functions of the two types of phase SZPs are deduced and the diffraction distributions are theoretically analyzed and simulated as well. By setting the fractional topological charge p and the orientation angle ϑ of a fractional SZP (FSZP), the intensity and the direction of the anisotropic edge enhancement can be controlled. A de-centered SZP (DSZP) can be obtained by shifting the coordinates of the traditional phase SZP while the topological charge equals to 1. The intensity and direction of the anisotropic edge enhancement can be controlled by setting the displacement distance r0 and the azimuthal angle φ0 of a DSZP. The anisotropic edge enhancement of the two phase SZPs was experimentally demonstrated with a phase pattern and living biological cells under femtosecond laser illumination.

Multi-image hiding method based on polarization multiplexing digital holography

A novel algorithm of multi-image hiding method is presented based on polarization multiplexing digital holography (PMDH). In our single wavelength PMDH scheme, four beams, two p-polarized beams and two s-polarized beams, are formed by two Polarization Beam Splitters (PBS) in the Mach-Zehnder interferometer. Then two different object waves with mutually orthogonal polarization states interfere corresponding reference waves respectively. Therefore two objects can be acquired from the compound holography recorded by CCD with proper incident angle between two reference beams simultaneously. The hologram storing multi-image is then superposed on the discrete-cosine-transform (DCT) domain of the content image, and the extraction process only requires the watermarked image without content image. Simulation results also demonstrate that the embedded multi-image can be successfully extracted under different kinds of attacks.

Phase-shifting-free resolution enhancement in digital holographic microscopy under structured illumination

In this paper, we present a phase-shifting-free method to improve the resolution of digital holographic microscopy (DHM) under the structured illumination (SI). The SI used in the system is different from the traditional SI for it is free of the visible structure due to two illumination lights with orthogonal polarization states. To separate the recorded information and also retrieve the object phase, two reference beams with different carrier frequencies and orthogonal polarization states are adopted. The principle component analysis (PCA) algorithm is introduced in the reconstruction process. It is found that the modulated frequency of SI besides the quadratic phases of the imaging system can be easily removed with help of PCA. Therefore, phase-shifting is not required both in recording and reconstruction process. The simulation is performed to validate our method, while the proposed method is applied to the resolution enhancement for amplitude-contrast and phase-contrast objects imaging in experiments. The resolution is doubled in the simulation, and it shows 78% resolution improvement in the experiments.

Generation of elliptic perfect optical vortex and elliptic perfect vector beam by modulating the dynamic and geometric phase

We propose a method for generating an elliptic perfect vector beam (EPVB) by modulating the dynamic and geometric phases. It is theoretically demonstrated that the shape of the beam can be changed from circle to ellipse by setting the scale factor m of the dynamic phase, but the diameter of it is independent on the topological charge and the polarization order. Since the geometric phases provided by the dialectic Q-plate vary with the polarization state of the illumination beam, EPVB can be converted to the elliptic perfect optical vortex (EPOV) beam by changing the polarization state of the illuminating beam. Therefore, we also provide an alternative method to generate the EPOV beam. The experimental results agree well with the theoretical expectations.

The application of principal component analysis in sequence image hiding

In this paper, a hiding method is proposed to store vast quantities of image information based on PCA. A sequence eigenimages of objects are obtained by using PCA method. Then, wavelet coefficients of eigenimages are embedded into the wavelet domain of the carrying image. When the hiding information is extracted, we can take advantage of the decomposition coefficients to reconstruct the objects. The proposed method does not store the object images directly, but store the eigenimages which contain information of the objects. The experimental results show that the features of object are effectively embedded into the carrying image, and the proposed algorithm has a high capacity.

Novel algorithm for infrared image enhancement

A novel algorithm, which is based on creating the variance image of original image, for infrared image enhancement is proposed. Ordinary spatial filtering is powerful of reducing the noise of image, but it also reduces the contrast of image. Compared with spatial filtering, variance image not only reduces the noise but also enhances the image. In this paper, we combine the variance image and histogram equalization to enhance the infrared image blurred by random noise. The experimental results show the algorithm based on creating variance image is simple and effective, it can be widely used in infrared image enhancement.