Volume hologram printer to record the wavefront of three-dimensional objects

Abstract

A computer-generated hologram (CGH) is well-known to recon- struct 3-D images faithfully, and several CGH printers are reported. Since those printers can only output a transmission hologram, the large-scale optical system is necessary to reconstruct the full-parallax, full-color image. As a method of a simple reconstruction, it is only necessary to use a volume reflection hologram. However, the making of a volume holo- gram needs to transfer the CGH by means of an optical system. On the other hand, there are printers that output volume type holographic stereo- grams with the full-parallax, full-color image. However, the reconstructed image whose depth is large gets blurred due to the insufficient sampling rays of a 3-D object. The authors propose the volume hologram printer to record the wavefront of a 3-D object. By transferring the CGH that is dis- played on a liquid crystal on silicon, the proposed printer can output the volume hologram. In addition, the large volume hologram can be printed by transferring plural CGH that recorded the partial 3-D object in turn. As a result, the printed volume hologram has been able to reconstruct a mono- chrome 3-D image by white light illumination, and realized the full-parallax image. © 2012 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). (DOI: 10.1117/1 .OE.51.7.075802)