Continuous-wave terahertz in-line digital holography

A terahertz (THz) in-line digital holography project has been proposed based on a CO₂ pumped 2.52?THz continuous-wave laser and a pyroelectric-array camera used as the detector. The THz Gabor in-line digital holograms have been obtained and then the high resolution reconstruction of THz in-line digital holography was realized. The resolution of an in-line digital holography system has been tested by the use of a series of objects. High-quality and high-resolution reconstructed images have been obtained, and the real lateral resolution is higher than 0.2?mm. It can be inferred from the results that the THz Gabor in-line digital holography system has the abilities of real-time and high-resolution imaging.     

Real-time, continuous-wave terahertz imaging by a pyroelectric camera

Real-time, continuous-wave terahertz (THz) imaging is demonstrated. A 1.89-THz optically-pumped farinfrared laser is used as the illumination source, and a 124 × 124 element room-temperature pyroelectric camera is adopted as the detector. With this setup, THz images through various wrapping materials are shown. The results show that this imaging system has the potential applications in real-time mail and security inspection.     

太赫兹数字全息术的研究进展

随着太赫兹成像技术的不断成熟,其空间分辨率和系统信噪比逐渐提高,成像速度逐渐加快,光学信息获取能力逐渐变强,人们对太赫兹成像在基础研究和工业应用的开发也逐渐深入。本文综述了近年来科研人员利用太赫兹数字全息成像系统进行的部分研究工作,包括对平板太赫兹元件的性能表征、对光控太赫兹元件的功能验证、对衍射太赫兹场中的纵向分量进行观测、以及对金属亚波长器件的太赫兹表面波进行分析。这些工作的完成对于太赫兹集成系统的研究和太赫兹成像技术的应用都具有积极的推动作用。     

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.     

Three-dimensional object recognition by use of digital holography

We present a technique for performing three-dimensional (3D) pattern recognition by use of in-line digital holography. The complex amplitude distribution generated by a 3D object at an arbitrary plane located in the Fresnel diffraction region is recorded by phase-shifting interferometry. The digital hologram contains information about the 3D object's shape, location, and orientation. This information allows us to perform 3D pattern-recognition techniques with high discrimination and to measure 3D orientation changes. Experimental results are presented.     

Three-dimensional-object recognition by use of single-exposure on-axis digital holography

On-axis phase-shifting digital holography requires recording of multiple holograms. We describe a novel real-time three-dimensional- (3-D-) object recognition system that uses single-exposure on-axis digital holography. In contrast to 3-D-object recognition by means of a conventional phase-shifting scheme that requires multiple exposures, our proposed method requires only a single digital hologram to be synthesized and used to recognize 3-D objects. A benefit of the proposed 3-D recognition method is enhanced practicality of digital holography for 3-D recognition in terms of its simplicity and greater robustness to external scene parameters such as moving targets and environmental noise factors. We show experimentally the utility of the single-exposure on-axis digital holography-based 3-D-object recognition method.     

Object recognition by use of polarimetric phase-shifting digital holography

Pattern recognition by use of polarimetric phase-shifting digital holography is presented. Using holography, the amplitude distribution and phase difference distribution between two orthogonal polarizations of three-dimensional (3D) or two-dimensional phase objects are obtained. This information contains both complex amplitude and polarimetric characteristics of the object, and it can be used for improving the discrimination capability of object recognition. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the idea. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on 3D polarimetric recognition of objects using digital holography.     

Three-dimensional image fusion by use of multiwavelength digital holography

We present three-dimensional (3D) image fusion by use of digital holography. We demonstrate experimentally that, through the image fusion technique with multiresolution wavelet decomposition, it is possible to increase the details and contrast of 3D reconstructed images obtained by multiwavelength digital holography. Although there is substantial activity in the fields of image fusion and holography, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of 3D image fusion by use of digital holography.     

Real-time, continuous-wave terahertz imaging by use of a microbolometer focal-plane array

Real-time, continuous-wave terahertz imaging is demonstrated with a 10 mW, 2.52 THz (118.8 microm) far-infrared gas laser and a 160 x 120 element microbolometer camera. The microbolometer camera is designed for wavelengths of 7.5-14 microm but retains sensitivity at terahertz (THz) frequencies. The setup has no moving parts, and transmission-mode THz images can be obtained at the video rate of 60 frames/s. The peak signal-to-noise ratio is estimated to be 13 dB for a single frame of video, acquired in 16 ms. With this setup, THz imaging through a FedEx envelope is demonstrated, showing the feasibility of real-time mail screening.     

Submillimeter imaging with a pyroelectric TV camera

The use of a TV camera with a standard pyroelectric tube for imaging continuous submillimeter (submm) waves is described. The spectral sensitivity of such pyroelectric vidicon has been measured. The results of experiments on diffraction and interference using submm laser radiation are presented. For the first time, submm images of different objects have been obtained with the aid of a pyroelectric vidicon. It has been shown that a pyroelectric TV camera can be effectively employed in various laser studies as well as in submm imagery technique.     

Polarization imaging of a 3D object by use of on-axis phase-shifting digital holography

A polarimetric imaging method of a 3D object by use of on-axis phase-shifting digital holography is presented. The polarimetric image results from a combination of two kinds of holographic imaging using orthogonal polarized reference waves. Experimental demonstration of a 3D polarimetric imaging is presented.     

对热释电摄像机调制方法的研究

本文主要分析了用于红外干涉测试中的热释电摄像机的工作原理及其调制特性，比较了几种调制方式的优缺点，最后提出了热释电成像的移相调制法，考虑了优选调制频率对测试结果的影响，并给出实测结果。     

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.     

Single-exposure two-dimensional superresolution in digital holography using a vertical cavity surface-emitting laser source array

We present a new implementation capable of producing two-dimensional (2D) superresolution (SR) imaging in a single exposure by aperture synthesis in digital lensless Fourier holography when using angular multiplexing provided by a vertical cavity surface-emitting laser source array. The system performs the recording in a single CCD snapshot of a multiplexed hologram coming from the incoherent addition of multiple subholograms, where each contains information about a different 2D spatial frequency band of the object's spectrum. Thus, a set of nonoverlapping bandpass images of the input object can be recovered by Fourier transformation (FT) of the multiplexed hologram. The SR is obtained by coherent addition of the information contained in each bandpass image while generating an enlarged synthetic aperture. Experimental results demonstrate improvement in resolution and image quality.     

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.     

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.     

Ultrashort pulse characterization with a terahertz streak camera

A phase-locked terahertz transient is exploited as an ultrafast phase gate for femtosecond optical pulses. We directly map out the group delay dispersion of a low-power near-infrared pulse by measuring the electro-optically induced polarization rotation as a function of wavelength. Our experiment covers the spectral window from 1.0 to 1.4 μm and reaches a temporal precision better than 1 fs. A quantitative analysis of the detector response confirms that this streaking technique requires no reconstruction algorithm and is also well suited for the characterization of pulses spanning more than one optical octave.     

Phase-shifting in-line digital holography on a digital micro-mirror device

A digital phase-shifting in-line holographic system based on the single coherence beam is developed. A series of phase-shifting fringes are generated by computer and outputted by a digital micro-mirror device (DMD). These fringes modulate the coherence beam because of the intensity modulation ability of DMD. In this work, the reconstructed conjugate image would not appear because of applying the phase-shifting algorithm. And calibration for the value of the optical phase shift is not necessary. An experiment based on a lens-less digital in-line micro-holographic setup with a phase grating specimen is conducted to demonstrate the validity of the present method.