January

15, 1994 / Vol. 19, No. 2 / OPTICS LETTERS

135

High-quality recording of a full-parallax holographic stereogram with a digital diffuser

Masahiro Yamaguchi, Hideaki Endoh, Toshio Honda,* and Nagaaki Ohyama
Imaging Science and Engineering Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 4259 Nagatsuta, Midori-ku, Yokohama 227, Japan
Received September 24, 1993 A digital diffuser designed for the efficient recording of Fourier holography is applied to the exposure of full-

parallax holographic stereograms. From experimental results we confirm that the gray-level characteristic is greatly improved with the digital diffuser. High-resolution three-dimensional imagery is obtained with
suppression of speckle noise. The limitation of the resolution is also described.

A holographic three-dimensional (3-D) printer' (holoprinter) is under development as a peripheral for 3-D image processing systems. A multidot recording
method1
2

was

developed

to record

and

display

distortion-free images in 3-D hard copy of computergenerated or -processed data. In this Letter we describe an application of a digital diffuser to the holoprinter to obtain a high-resolution image. After the effectiveness of the digital diffuser is experimentally investigated, a high-quality 3-D image that has both horizontal and vertical parallax is synthesized. The limitation of the image resolution
is also discussed.

The principle of multidot recording is described in Ref. 1. By use of the optical system shown in Fig. 1, an array of small elementary reflection-type holograms is recorded in a thick recording material. The hologram film or the laser optical head is translated horizontally and/or vertically after each exposure so that the whole surface of the hologram is exposed by an array of small elementary holograms. The image displayed on the spatial light modulator (SLM), in this case a liquid-crystal panel, is a geometrical projection of the 3-D object calculated
by a modified computer-graphic technique, which is

different from the conventional technique in that the center of projection does not correspond to the location of the observer. This means that the objects behind the center of projection are processed and hidden surfaces are removed according to the location of the observer. In the reconstruction stage, all the light rays that pass through the hologram plane are reproduced correctly. Since the hologram is a reflection grating in a thick recording material, the so-called Lippmann-type hologram, reflected light becomes almost monochromatic, and full-parallax 3-D imagery can be displayed even under ordinary whitelight illumination. In fact, the recording optics shown in Fig. 1 are slightly defocused so that the average intensity on the hologram plane may be almost uniform. However,
when the pitch of elements is reduced to show a

image because of the limitation of the dynamic range of the recording material. Moreover, if the hologram film is placed near the focal plane of the lens to avoid multiple exposure, it becomes difficult to record holograms with high efficiency. This is because, when the hologram film is placed on the Fourier plane, the intensity variation on the hologram plane depends on the spatial frequency component of the image displayed on the SLM. The image amplitude on the SLM is the projection of the 3-D object, and usually it has a small high-frequency component. The phase distribution, which especially affects the frequency spectrum of the image, is almost identical to the amplitude pattern since the phase is also modulated along with the amplitude by the SLM. Therefore the low-frequency component is dominant even in the phase pattern, and the object light has a large variation on the hologram plane. As a result, the recording of a hologram with high efficiency is difficult if the hologram film is located near the focal plane. Thus we use a weak diffuser to improve the uniformity of the object light on the hologram plane. However, since the loss of object light is increased and speckle noise affects the reconstructed image if a diffuser such as ground glass is used on the input image, we apply a quasi-band-limited diffuser to obtain uniform intensity distribution and a speckleless reconstructed image. Quasi-band-limited diffusers designed by a digital process are called digital diffusers and were

high-resolution image, more than one elementary hologram is exposed in the same region of the hologram, resulting in low luminance of the replayed
0146-9592/94/020135-03$6.00/0

Translation

Fig. 1. Optical setup for multidot recording of a holographic stereogram.

1994 Optical Society of America

136

OPTICS LETTERS / Vol. 19, No. 2 / January

Digital diffuser (Pseudorandom diffuser)

15, 1994

C ...--- ''.
Object
beam : X

1~'J I I-

) Reference
beam

I _1Hologram Film SLM Le zns

/
1

Aperture stop

Fig. 2. Optical recording system with a digital diffuser.

Fig. 3. Setup for the measurement of gray-level reconstruction of a holographic stereogram. Observations (1) and (2) correspond to the results shown by curves (1) and
(2) in Fig. 4.

developed for the exposure of Fourier holography. 3 -5

We apply the digital diffuser to the synthesis of full-parallax holographic stereograms. By use of the digital diffuser, as shown in Fig. 2, the incident object light is slightly diffused, and undesirable diffraction
is blocked by a small aperture before the hologram plane. We use a pseudorandom diffuser 3 (PRD) as a

shows the characteristics of gray-level reconstruction observed from normal and oblique directions. The gray levels are almost correctly reproduced if the PRD is used in recording, whereas the reconstructed light is saturated without the use of the PRD, especially when observation is from an oblique direction. As Fig. 4 shows, we have confirmed that the recording of small-size elementary hologram with proper gray level becomes possible with the use of a digital diffuser. Using the new optical system shown in Fig. 2, we synthesized a full-parallax hologram of a highresolution 3-D image. The image to be displayed on the SLM was calculated by the ray-tracing technique, and each image had 64 X 64 pixels and 16 gray levels, which were mapped to obtain linear reproduction by use of the characteristic curve shown in Fig. 4(a). The reconstructed image from the synthesized hologram is shown in Fig. 5. The hologram consists of 340 X 220 elementary holograms, and the pitch of each element is 0.3 mm, which is equivalent to popular video monitors. The dot spacing of the elementary holograms cannot be seen when it is observed at a distance of more than 300 mm from the hologram. With the use of the PRD, it becomes possible to produce high-resolution imagery; however, the image resolution of the holographic stereogram is still limited by the size of the elementary hologram. In order to avoid a reduction in diffraction efficiency, elementary holograms should be exposed so as not to overlap each other, so the pitch of the elemen.=.

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digital diffuser in our experiment. The PRD has a four-level pseudorandom phase sequence in which the phase step at each boundary is +7r/2 or -7r/2. The
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spectrum of the PRD is almost band limited; thus it becomes possible to record speckleless images of Fourier-transform holograms. In the first experiment, we examined the gray-level reproduction by recording holograms with and without the PRD. The holograms of gray-scale images were synthesized by the optical systems shown in Figs. 1 and 2, in which the pitch of the elementary hologram is 0.5 mm and the size of each element is almost equal to the element pitch. The gray-scale hologram consists of arrays of elementary holograms. A constant gray-level image was exposed in each array of 5.0 mm x 5.0 mm squares, and each array was illuminated by collimated white light. The relative intensities of the reconstructed light were measured by a photodetector placed 300 mm from the hologram, as illustrated in Fig. 3. The measured intensities were normalized against the output intensity of the brightest-level hologram array. Since the diameter of the aperture of the photodetector is -4 mm, which is as small as the pupil diameter of the human eye, the measurement setup is approximately equivalent to the human observation of holograms. Figure 4

Fig. 4. Gray-level reconstruction of holographic stereograms synthesized (a) with and (b) without the PRD in recording optics. O/R, ratio of the intensities of the object and reference lights. Curves (1) and (2) show the results observed from the normal and the oblique directions with respect to the hologram plane.

Fig. 5. Reconstructed 3-D image from the synthesized holographic stereogram.

January

15, 1994 / Vol. 19, No. 2 / OPTICS LETTERS

137

tary hologram should not be smaller than its width. Nakayama and Kato reported that the appropriate size of the Fourier-transform hologram is equal to the width of the main lobe of the PRD.3 Because the main-lobe width of the spectrum of the PRD should cover the spectrum of the image exposed in the Fourier hologram, the pixel pitch of the PRD should be equal to or smaller than the pixel pitch of the image for exposure. Therefore the size of the elementary hologram is determined by the resolution
of the image displayed on the SLM.

image and the parallax resolution are described and are sufficient for 3-D display applications.
The image resolution is also affected by the size of

Let us define the effective f-number of the lens as the focal length divided by the width of the SLM aperture. Then the width d of the elementary hologram is determined by the effective f-number F and the number of the pixels N of the image displayed on the
SLM. If the pixel pitch of the image on the SLM is

equal to that of the PRD, then the condition of the pitch p of the elementary hologram becomes p>d=AFN, (1)

where A is the wavelength of the recording laser light. Although a large amount of parallax information can be recorded with a small-f-number lens, the resolution of the parallax is still limited by the element pitch. Let AO be the angular resolution of the parallax. We then have
PA,0 > A, (2)

the illumination light source and the finite thickness of the photographic emulsion, the same as ordinary Lippmann holograms, whose image quality was discussed in Ref. 6. The effect of the sampling of the elementary hologram was also described previously.7 Furthermore the reconstructed image is blurred by the effect of diffraction, as described in Ref. 8. In summary, we have experimentally investigated the use of the digital diffuser for the recording of a full-parallax holographic stereogram. Highresolution imagery has been obtained by use of a PRD with improved gray-level reproduction. The limit of image resolution is also presented, and the multidot recording of a full-parallax holographic stereogram has sufficiently high quality for holoprinter applications. The authors thank K. Kasazumi and M. Kato of Matsushita Electric Industrial Company, Ltd., for providing a pseudorandom diffuser and for their helpful discussions. This study is supported by a Grantin-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture and the Kanagawa
Academy of Science and Technology Foundation.

*Present address, Faculty of Engineering, Chiba

University, 1-33 Yayoi-cho, Inage-ku, Chiba 263,

Japan. References
which gives the limitation of image resolution. Once the pitch of the elementary hologram is determined, the angular resolution of the parallax is constant even if a high-resolution SLM is used as the input image. In this case the parallax resolution at the
location of the observer's eye (Aw) is given by 1. M. Yamaguchi, N. Ohyama, and T. Honda, Appl. Opt.
31, 217 (1992).

2. M. Yamaguchi, H. Sugiura, T. Honda, and N. Ohyama,

J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 9, 1200 (1992).

3. Y. Nakayama and M. Kato, J. Opt. Soc. Am. 69, 1367

(1979).

4. R. Brauer, U. Wojak, F. Wyrowski, and 0. Bryngdahl,

Aw = ZAO = lA/p,

(3)

Opt. Lett. 16, 1427 (1991).

where I is the distance between the hologram plane and the observer. When A = 0.6 Itm, p = 0.3 mm, and I = 500 mm, then A O = 2.0 X 10-3 rad and Aw = 1.0 mm, which is smaller than the pupil diameter of the human eye, and the image for exposure is
500 X 500 pixels if the effective f-number of the lens

5. K. Kasazumi, M. Kato, M. Uno, I. Kobayashi, K. Adachi, T. Ohtani, and K. Kanai, Proc. Soc. Photo-Opt. Instrum. Eng. 1667, 104 (1992). 6. H. M. Smith, Principles of Holography (Wiley, New York, 1969), Chap. 5.
7. T. Yatagi, Appl. Opt. 15, 2722 (1976).

8. M. Yamaguchi, H. Hoshino, T. Honda, and N. Ohyama, Proc. Soc. Photo-Opt. Instrum. Eng. 1914, 25 (1993).

is 1.0. From relations (2) and (3) the limits of the