Speckle noise reduction in digital holography by use of multiple polarization holograms

A novel speckle reduction technique for digital holography is proposed. Multiple off-axis holograms are recorded using a circularly polarized illumination beam and a rotating linearly polarized reference beam. The speckle noise in the reconstructed images is suppressed by averaging these fields. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this technique experimentally and conduct additional statistical evaluation.     

Speckle noise reduction in digital holography with spatial light modulator and nonlocal means algorithm

An integrated method based on optical and digital image processing is presented to suppress speckle in digital holography. A spatial light modulator is adopted to introduce random phases to the illuminating beam. Multiple holograms are reconstructed and superimposed, and the intensity is averaged to smooth the noise. The adaptive algorithm based on the nonlocal means is designed to further suppress the speckle. The presented method is compared with other methods reduction is improved, and the proposed method is effective The experimental results show that speckle and feasible.     

Speckle free redundant holography

A new technique with experimental results for producing speckle free redundant holograms without a spurious back ground pattern is reported.     

Speckle noise reduction by division and digital processing of a hologram

One of the common problems in classical and digital holography is presence of speckle in reconstructed images. Some methods have been predicted for speckle reduction. Speckle has a statistical distribution in size and intensity. Thus complete elimination of them is impossible. But, one can use this statistical characters to reduce its effects.In this paper a method is proposed for reduction of speckle effect by recording a hologram and then dividing it to several sub-holograms. Each sub-hologram is used to produce an image. Final image is constructed by superposition of these images. The final image has a smaller amount of speckle noise. Experimental results verify effectiveness of this technique.     

Depth-of-focus reduction for digital in-line holography of particle fields

Poor axial precision caused, in part, by large depth of focus (tau) has been a vexing problem in extraction of particle position from digital in-line holograms. A simple method is proposed to combat this depth-of-focus difficulty. The method is based on decoupling of size and position information. With d, Delta, and lambda being particle diameter, CCD pixel size, and the wavelength, respectively, our main theoretical result is the reduction of tau from tau - d2/lambda to tau - Delta2/lambda for particles of known size. This result is confirmed in laboratory experiments with holograms of calibrated glass spheres.     

Information reduction using lensless Fourier transform digital composite holography

An optical hologram contains substantially more information than necessary for some specific applications. Practical methodology of handling huge information contents in these holograms for such applications is cumbersome. In this paper, a method of information reduction, which aims at efficient storage and transmission of holograms, is investigated using digital composite holography in lensless Fourier transform configuration. The maximum information reduction factor obtained in our experiment is 105. The advantages/disadvantages of this method over an earlier method used in optical holography [Lin LH. A method of hologram information reduction by spatial frequency sampling. Appl Opt 1968;7:545] are also discussed.     

Virtual shearing interferometry by digital holography

A novel method of virtual shearing interferometry (VSI) is proposed. In this method, the shearogram is obtained by interference of a real object wave-front and a virtual object wave-front. The former is optically recorded and then digitally reconstructed; and the latter is introduced digitally by repositioning or reforming the former. The obvious advantages of VSI over conventional shearing interferometry (SI) are its versatility, accuracy, and simplicity. Only one real field is necessary to produce shearogram; there is no need of any real shearing device or even the phase unwrapping computation; and the digital shear can take any possible form according to different purposes. Both the optical experiments and computer simulations with lateral shearing, 180° rotational shearing and double lateral shearing for evaluation of lens aberrations in the general case including spherical aberration, coma, astigmatism, defocus, and tilts based on phase-shifting interferometry are given to verify the effectiveness of this method.     

Adaptive optics by incoherent digital holography

Adaptive optics in astronomical and other imaging systems allows compensation of aberrations introduced by random variations of the refractive index in the imaging path. I propose what I believe is a new type of adaptive optics system that dispenses with the hardware lenslet arrays and deformable mirrors of conventional systems. Theoretical and experimental studies show that wavefront sensing and compensation can be achieved by numerical processing of digital holograms of the incoherent object and a guide star. The incoherent digital holographic adaptive optics is seen to be particularly robust and efficient, with envisioned applications in astronomical imaging, as well as fluorescence microscopy and remote sensing.     

Surface contouring by phase-shifting digital holography

Surface contouring by phase-shifting digital holography is proposed that provides surface height from a change of reconstructed object phases due to the tilt of object illumination. Surface height from a reference plane is directly obtained from the phase change. Its sensitivity depends on the tilt angle as well as on the initial incident angle. By proper selection of the angles we can derive surface height without phase unwrapping. The sensitivity can be enhanced by increasing the tilt angle. Then we need phase unwrapping that is sensitive to noise due to laser speckles in the reconstructed images. This noise could be suppressed by selecting phase values at points of the maximum product of amplitudes before and after the illumination change in the course of data reduction from 1024×1024 to 512×512 and by selecting paths for phase unwrapping by looking for the intensity maximum. The observed height resolution is 20 μm. Effects of numerical focusing have also been investigated. The present method has the same sensitivity as the fringe projection method, but it has larger measurement depth and is also applicable to the deformation measurement with the same arrangement.     

Non-coherent noise reduction in digital holography based on root mean square technique

In this paper, the root mean square (rms) technique is applied in order to reduce the non-coherent noise in phase-contrast image. The proposed technique is applied to a sample of 200 μm step height nominally. The recorded off-axis interferograms generated from two different wavelengths are processed to obtain an object wave (amplitude and phase) for each wavelength separately. The independent phase maps are subtracted and a phase map for the beat-wavelength is obtained and converted to height map. The rms values of 10 pixels profiles from the obtained height map are calculated automatically to show the three-dimensional (3D) profile. The experimental results show that the non-coherent noise is reduced by the order of 90% when the rms technique is applied and the uncertainty in measurement has been found to be of the order of 1.5 μm. The proposed technique can provide a simple and real solution for measuring 3D objects having high abrupt height difference.     

Comparative digital holography

We described a method for direct holographic comparison of the shape or the deformation of two objects when it is not necessary that both samples be located at the same place. In contrast to the well-known incoherent techniques based on inverse fringe projection, this new approach uses a coherent mask that is imaged onto a sample object that has a microstructure different from that of the master object. The coherent mask is created by digital holography to permit instant access to complete optical information on the master object at any wanted place. Transmission of the digital master holograms to the relevant places can be made with a broadband digital telecommunication network such as the Internet.     

Time-averaged digital holography

We demonstrate that it is possible to study the modal structures of a vibrating object with digitally recorded holograms by use of the time-averaging principle. We investigate the numerical reconstruction from a theoretical point of view, and we show that the numerically reconstructed object from a digital hologram is modulated by the zeroth-order Bessel function. Results of experiments in time-averaged digital holography are presented.     

Phase-shifting digital holography

A new method for three-dimensional image formation is proposed in which the distribution of complex amplitude at a plane is measured by phase-shifting interferometry and then Fresnel transformed by a digital computer. The method can reconstruct an arbitrary cross section of a three-dimensional object with higher image quality and a wider viewing angle than from conventional digital holography using an off-axis configuration. Basic principles and experimental verification are described.     

Vertical-bandwidth-limited digital holography

Optical scanning holography (OSH) is a promising technique to acquire a big-size digital hologram. However, the acquisition speed is limited by the mechanical scanner. In this Letter we apply the OSH in conjunction with an anisotropic low-pass filtering pupil to acquire vertical-bandwidth-limited (VBL) holograms. The size and the acquisition time of the VBL hologram can be reduced by one order of magnitude while the horizontal resolution remains the same as the conventional scanning hologram. The VBL hologram can be coded as an off-axis hologram without any postfiltering. Meanwhile, the full horizontal bandwidth of the displaying device can be capitalized.     

LED光源数字全息技术研究

研究以发光二极管(LED)作为光源的部分相干光数字全息技术.首先研究LED的时间相干性和空间相干性,尽管LED的时间相干性较差,但空间相干性可以通过减小光源发光面积来提高.利用LED的时间相干性较差、相干长度短的特点,抑制相干噪声,改善数字全息重建质量.在同一全息记录系统,通过实验,比较了用激光和LED光源的数字全息重建图像质量.结果表明:基于LED光源的数字全息,完全消除了使用激光光源的散斑噪声和由光学元件引入的寄生干涉噪声,物光场的重现质量,包括振幅和相位都得到了很大提高.但由于LED光源的较低的空间相干性,一般只适用于同轴相移数字全息,待测物体的厚度在十几微米以内,应用受到一定限制.     

Speckle reduction by energy time-frequency filtering

Structural noise is a very important limitation to the visibility of flaw echoes in ultrasonic testing and evaluation of highly scattering materials. In order to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio, different algorithms have been developed. One of these techniques is based on filtering the spectrum low band of the received echo to obtain a significant improvement of the defect visibility. Based on this idea, in this work a new time-frequency technique is presented. In this method, block-processing autoregressive techniques are used to estimate the instantaneous center frequency of the traveling wave. From this information, a time-frequency filter is designed tuned at half the estimated instantaneous center frequency. Experimental results and the comparison with the non-time-frequency filtering technique are also included, showing that the proposed method has an excellent performance on SNR enhancement.     

Watermarking of three-dimensional objects by digital holography

We present an optical method for information watermarking of three-dimensional (3D) objects by digital holography. A hidden image is embedded by double phase encoding in a phase-shift digital hologram of the 3D object. We decode the watermarked hologram to reconstruct the hidden image and the 3D object. We use either the entire hologram or a part of it to decode the hidden image. Experiments are presented to illustrate the ability to recover both the 3D object and the decoded hidden image. Digital holograms of the 3D object are obtained by optical experiments. The watermarking process, 3D object reconstruction, and hidden image recovery are performed digitally. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of 3D object watermarking by use of a phase encoding technique and digital holography.     

Securing information by use of digital holography

An information security method that uses a digital holographic technique is presented. An encrypted image is stored as a digital hologram. The decryption key is also stored as a digital hologram. The encrypted image can be electrically decrypted by use of the digital hologram of the key. This security technique provides secure storage and data transmission. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the proposed method.     

Reduction of speckle noise in digital holography by using digital image processing

A fundamental problem in optical and digital holography is the presence of speckle noise in the reconstruction process. Many approaches have been carried out in order to overcome such a problem ranging from modifying the spatial coherence of the illumination (optical techniques) to image processing techniques (digital techniques). This work shows the merged use of digital image processing techniques in order to reduce the speckle noise in digital reconstruction of optically recorded Fresnel's holograms. The proposed filtering techniques are illustrated with experimental results.     

Optical-path-length-shifting color digital holography

We propose an in-line color digital holography that can suppress a 0th-order diffraction image and a conjugate image. This technique reconstructs the image of an object from two holograms that are formed at two different distances from the object for each primary color. We numerically simulated the proposed technique and confirmed that it enabled the reconstruction of higher-quality images of an object than the Fresnel transform alone, which is the simplest reconstruction algorithm in digital holography. The effectiveness of the proposed technique was also quantitatively shown by evaluating the reconstructed images using root-mean-square errors. Thus, it was confirmed that the proposed technique was capable of recording and reconstructing both three-dimensional information and color information of an object.