Method for eliminating zero-order diffraction in lensless Fourier transform digital holography

A method to induce phase shifting in lensless Fourier of digital holography system is presented. In this method, by computer simulation and theoretical analysis on the technology to eliminate the influence of zero-order diffraction in force, it can be found that, a reference light induced in a random non-2π integral number of phase shifting shooting to get the second hologram, and wave reconstruction can be got by the difference value image of the two holograms. And, the method of different digital holography record system with different phase shifting should be used. In this paper, theoretical analyses have been done in detail to discuss the problems that exist in the unsuitable phase-shifting methods. Furthermore, some experiments have been done to prove the reliability of this method. This method can significantly improve the image quality and give better resolution of the reconstructed image.     

无零级衍射干扰的彩色数字全息研究

彩色数字全息研究中,用球面波为重建波及角谱衍射公式进行波前重建是一种有效的方法.然而,重建图像上通常伴有强烈的零级衍射干扰.本文通过理论分析,对波前重建过程作了重要改进.用改进后的方法进行彩色数字全息的实验研究表明,重建彩色图像的质量获得显著改善. 关键词： 彩色数字全息 波前重建 零级衍射干扰     

Elimination of zero-order and conjugate images in off-axis digital holography

In this paper, a new digital method has been developed for eliminating the zero-order and conjugate image in off-axis digital holography. The method consists of filtering the spatial frequencies associated with these undesired terms (the zero-order and conjugate images) in the computed Fourier transform plane of the hologram multiplied with computer simulated original reference wave (written as (RI_h)). An important conclusion is that, without the need for additional shift-spectrum process, the spectrum of real image always appears in the center of the spectrum plane and never shifts. This brings us some convenient to design a filtering window. The theoretical analysis and the corresponding simulation and experiment results are given. As the zero-order and conjugate image are eliminated, both the contrast and brightness of the real image are enhanced and the image quality is improved. Meanwhile, the process of designing a filtering window is simple and convenient.     

Minimalist and convenient mode changing off-axis digital holography

Basic issues in creating practical setups for off-axis digital holography involve having (i) convenient switch of imaging in the transmission and reflection modes, (ii) reduction in stray light reflection, (iii) immunity against environmental noise, and (iv) efficient usage of light output from the laser source. These exigencies are addressed using a free-space setup described here that applies a minimal number of optical components. Experimental results are presented to verify the approach.     

一种有效解决离轴数字全息相图倾斜畸变的数字参考平面方法

离轴数字全息中使用倾斜的平面参考波以消除成像中的零级衍射和共轭像是一种简捷和常用的方法,然而该方法遇到的一个困扰是,由于倾斜参考波引入了附加的载波频率并很难通过实验测量准确地获得附加的载波频率值或倾角,因此会导致重建的相图出现一定的倾斜畸变而无法完全修正.本文提出了一种数字参考平面算法以解决这一问题.该算法利用重建相图的平坦区域选点构建一个能准确表征相图倾斜的数字参考平面,并建立该平面参量与参考波载波频率的数学关系和作为随后相图畸变修正迭代计算的判据.该算法简单有效,不仅能实现对倾斜相位畸变的准确修正,而且能准确地获得倾斜平面参考波的附加载波频率.由于在相位解包裹重建中结合了抑噪处理,因此该方法在环境和系统噪声的影响下仍然有效,实验结果验证了理论设计的有效性.     

Digital off-axis holography without zero-order diffraction via phase manipulation

By means of manipulating the phase information of the object beam in an off-axis digital holographic setup, we show that it is possible to fully eliminate the zero-order diffraction (ZOD) from numerically reconstructed holograms. Two different approaches are presented. In the first method, we introduce a ground glass on the object path beam to provide a random phase illumination. The subtraction between two holograms recorded with different positions of the ground glass yields a ZOD free hologram. In the second approach, a piece of window glass inserted on the path of the object beam produces a constant phase shift. The subtraction of two holograms, one recorded with and one without window glass generates a new hologram whose numerical reconstruction is ZOD free. Theoretical models and experimental results are shown to validate our proposals. They show that the proposed methods totally remove the ZOD without ruining the object information.     

The determination of material parameters of microcomponents using digital holography

Progresses in microsystem technology promise a lot of new applications in industry and research. However, the increased complexity of the microsystems demand sensitive and robust measurement techniques. Fullfield and non invasive methods are desirable to get access to spatially resolved material properties and parameters.This contribution describes a simple and fast interferometric method for the analysis of shape and deformation of small objects by optical means. These quantities together with a well defined loading of the components can be the starting point for the determination of material parameters like Poisson-ratio, Young's modulus or the thermal expansion coefficient. Holographic interferometry and multiple wavelength contouring as well as multiple source point contouring are precise enough to fulfill the requests for precision and resolution in microsystem technology even on complex shaped structures with steps or gapsA new adaptive, iterative algorithm is developed and applied to the measured results that allows the numerical evaluation of the phase data to get absolute shape and deformation information in Cartesian coordinates. Surfaces with holes, gaps and steps can be registered without any ambiguities. Digital holography as the underlying holographic recording mechanism is extremely suitable for small objects and lead to simple and compact setups in which the objects’ shape as well as their deformation behavior can be recorded. Experiments using silicon microbeams and an object from fine mechanics are described to show the great potential of these fast and robust measurement techniques with respect to the determination of material parameters.     

数字全息再现像中零级干扰噪声消除及图像增强研究

利用基于图像处理的微分梯度方法预先对数字全息图进行空间域的图像增强操作,可以达到消除全息再现时的零级衍射干扰的目的.它无需其它辅助设备或多次全息记录,是一种方便简洁的处理方法.在理论分析和数字再现结果中都表明,该方法不仅能够有效地消除零级衍射像,同时对于真实像的再现质量有着显著提高.     

Digital holography as a tool for testing high-aperture micro-optics

The collimation of strongly diverging laser beams emitted by high-power diode lasers is performed with aspherical micro-optical components which have large numerical apertures up to NA=0.7. Conventional interferometric techniques do neither deliver the resolution nor the test frequency and are too costly for an industrial application.Digital holography is presented as a measurement tool for the characterization of micro-optical components in this paper providing a robust and fast technique with a simple and compact setup.The setup presented in this contribution does not apply any imaging or magnifying optics thus avoiding any additional aberrations in the wavefront which would falsify the measurement. The reconstruction process is performed in the computer giving direct access to intensity and phase of the measured wavefront. Additional experimental efforts like, e.g. phase shifting techniques are not needed.The large numerical aperture of the microlenses leads to high fringe densities in the holograms which cannot be resolved by CCD-detectors directly. In order to avoid this problem digital holography is combined with a multiple wavelength technique and a diffusing screen to capture the highly diverging wavefront. An averaging method to reduce the introduced speckle noise is applied and results of the characterization of refractive cylindrical microlenses are presented.     

Wave front reconstruction of Fresnel off-axis holograms with compensation of aberrations by means of phase-shifting digital holography

Off-axis holograms recorded with a CCD camera are numerically reconstructed in amplitude by calculating through the Fresnel–Kirchhoff integral. A phase-shifting Mach–Zehnder interferometer is used for recording four-quadrature phase-shifted off-axis holograms. The basic principle of this technique and its experimental verification are described. We show that the application of this algorithm allows for the suppression of the zero order of diffraction and of the twin image and that the contrast of the reconstructed images can be further enhanced by digital compensation of the aberrations introduced by the holographic recording system     

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.     

四步相移数字全息中随机误差的抑制方法

提出一种在四步相移数字全息中消除随机相移误差及CCD噪声的方法。通过多次重复四步相移数字全息的实验过程,使得每一步的相移都有多幅全息图像与之对应,把每一步对应的多幅全息图像进行数学平均就会得到4幅全息均值图像。理论分析表明,使用这4幅全息均值图像进行数字全息的重建,可以得到精确的物光波的分布,有效地消除随机相移误差及CCD噪声的影响。计算机模拟结果表明:该方法有助于提高数字全息重建光场质量。     

Potential of digital holography in particle measurement

This paper describes the potential power of digital holography in particle measurement and its expected development in the near future. In digital holography, image reconstruction is carried out numerically on a computer using observed hologram patterns and some quantitative information can be derived from the reconstructed images. In this paper, the basic concept and procedure of digital in-line holography are shown mainly for particle depth measurement and the performance test results obtained in numerical simulations and experiments are demonstrated to examine the potential of the present method.     

High resolution digital holography

In digital Fresnel holography, present specifications of charge-coupled device cameras require the incident beams to be quasi-parallel. That implies large speckle grain size and low lateral resolution in reconstructed images. Better lateral resolutions are demonstrated in our work, down to 8 μm, allowing the observation of sub-millimetre objects by digital holography. The experimental set-up built samples the incident light distribution with a definition of 500 pixels mm⁻¹. The maximum acceptable angle is then widened and the hologram recording and reconstruction distances are drastically reduced, as well as the speckle size. Interferometric holography was implemented for the measurement of the deformation of a sub-millimetre silicon cantilever and results in phase-contrasts imaging are also reported. The design of dedicated complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor active pixel sensor cameras is also discussed.     

High-resolution digital transmission microscopy—a Fourier holography approach

A spherical reference field is used to construct a digital holographic system with a demonstrated resolution up to 228 line pairs per mm. The reference field originates from a GRIN lens placed 1 mm from the illuminated object. This allows the use of a standard sensor to record the hologram with the required numerical aperture. The image is determined by evaluation of the Rayleigh–Sommerfeld diffraction integral that relates the object field in the image plane to the object field in the sensor plane. Experimental results are given for two charge coupled device sensors and one complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor active pixel sensor.     

Use of digital color holography for crack investigation in electronic components

This paper presents the experimental optical analysis of the crack inside an electronic component. The optical setup is used to carry out multidimensional deformation measurements using digital color holography and the spatial multiplexing of holograms. Since the Fresnel transform method depends on wavelength, a wavelength-dependent-zero-padding algorithm is described and results in a rigorous sizing of each reconstructed monochrome image. The criterion to optimize the parameters is presented and is based on minimizing the widening of the impulse response of the full recording/reconstruction process. The application of the proposed method is illustrated through the analysis of the mechanical deformation of the electronic component, and offers keys to understand its failure mode in industrial conditions.     

Studies on aperture synthesis in digital Fresnel holography

Aperture synthesis can improve image resolution in digital holography by increasing the numerical aperture of the system. In this paper, we show that both the lateral resolution and image field of view can be enhanced at the same time using a more general Fresnel holography setup and hologram stitching. The impact of aperture synthesis on the lateral resolution is investigated both theoretically and experimentally. In the experiment, the synthesis is executed by moving the compact digital holographic system in two directions. Nine holograms are recorded and stitched into one hologram. The reconstruction results show that expanding aperture improves the lateral resolution. The lensless Fresnel holography used in this paper is demonstrated to have the ability to provide a larger numerical aperture and can compress the object spectrum in recording process.     

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.     

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.     

Green's formulation for robust phase unwrapping in digital holography

We present, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, a phase unwrapping method based on an algorithm which makes use of Green's first identity. This method aims at recovering the correct phase information encoded in a fringe pattern after digital holography (DH) numerical processing. DH provides a quantitative measurement of the three-dimensional surface profile of objects. The information about the profile can be obtained in principle from the phase-map. However, the measured phase-map provides the actual phase values wrapped mod.2π so that an unwrapping process is required in order to reconstruct the object profile.