Projection-type see-through holographic three-dimensional display.

Owing to the limited spatio-temporal resolution of display devices, dynamic holographic three-dimensional displays suffer from a critical trade-off between the display size and the visual angle. Here we show a projection-type holographic three-dimensional display, in which a digitally designed holographic optical element and a digital holographic projection technique are combined to increase both factors at the same time. In the experiment, the enlarged holographic image, which is twice as large as the original display device, projected on the screen of the digitally designed holographic optical element was concentrated at the target observation area so as to increase the visual angle, which is six times as large as that for a general holographic display. Because the display size and the visual angle can be designed independently, the proposed system will accelerate the adoption of holographic three-dimensional displays in industrial applications, such as digital signage, in-car head-up displays, smart-glasses and head-mounted displays.

Large size three-dimensional video by electronic holography using multiple spatial light modulators.

In this paper, we propose a new method of using multiple spatial light modulators (SLMs) to increase the size of three-dimensional (3D) images that are displayed using electronic holography. The scalability of images produced by the previous method had an upper limit that was derived from the path length of the image-readout part. We were able to produce larger colour electronic holographic images with a newly devised space-saving image-readout optical system for multiple reflection-type SLMs. This optical system is designed so that the path length of the image-readout part is half that of the previous method. It consists of polarization beam splitters (PBSs), half-wave plates (HWPs), and polarizers. We used 16 (4 × 4) 4K×2K-pixel SLMs for displaying holograms. The experimental device we constructed was able to perform 20 fps video reproduction in colour of full-parallax holographic 3D images with a diagonal image size of 85 mm and a horizontal viewing-zone angle of 5.6 degrees.

Image size scalable full-parallax coloured three-dimensional video by electronic holography.

In electronic holography, various methods have been considered for using multiple spatial light modulators (SLM) to increase the image size. In a previous work, we used a monochrome light source for a method that located an optical system containing lens arrays and other components in front of multiple SLMs. This paper proposes a colourization technique for that system based on time division multiplexing using laser light sources of three colours (red, green, and blue). The experimental device we constructed was able to perform video playback (20 fps) in colour of full parallax holographic three-dimensional (3D) images with an image size of 63 mm and a viewing-zone angle of 5.6 degrees without losing any part of the 3D image.

3D objects enlargement technique using an optical system and multiple SLMs for electronic holography.

One problem in electronic holography, which is caused by the display performance of spatial light modulators (SLM), is that the size of reconstructed 3D objects is small. Although methods for increasing the size using multiple SLMs have been considered, they typically had the problem that some parts of 3D objects were missing as a result of the gap between adjacent SLMs or 3D objects lost the vertical parallax. This paper proposes a method of resolving this problem by locating an optical system containing a lens array and other components in front of multiple SLMs. We used an optical system and 9 SLMs to construct a device equivalent to an SLM with approximately 74,600,000 pixels and used this to reconstruct 3D objects in both the horizontal and vertical parallax with an image size of 63 mm without losing any part of 3D objects.

Real-time capture and reconstruction system with multiple GPUs for a 3D live scene by a generation from 4K IP images to 8K holograms.

We developed a real-time capture and reconstruction system for three-dimensional (3D) live scenes. In previous research, we used integral photography (IP) to capture 3D images and then generated holograms from the IP images to implement a real-time reconstruction system. In this paper, we use a 4K (3,840 × 2,160) camera to capture IP images and 8K (7,680 × 4,320) liquid crystal display (LCD) panels for the reconstruction of holograms. We investigate two methods for enlarging the 4K images that were captured by integral photography to 8K images. One of the methods increases the number of pixels of each elemental image. The other increases the number of elemental images. In addition, we developed a personal computer (PC) cluster system with graphics processing units (GPUs) for the enlargement of IP images and the generation of holograms from the IP images using fast Fourier transform (FFT). We used the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) as the development environment for the GPUs. The Fast Fourier transform is performed using the CUFFT (CUDA FFT) library. As a result, we developed an integrated system for performing all processing from the capture to the reconstruction of 3D images by using these components and successfully used this system to reconstruct a 3D live scene at 12 frames per second.

Calculating the Fresnel diffraction of light from a shifted and tilted plane.

We propose a technique for calculating the diffraction of light in the Fresnel region from a plane that is the light source (source plane) to a plane at which the diffracted light is to be calculated (destination plane). When the wavefield of the source plane is described by a group of points on a grid, this technique can be used to calculate the wavefield of the group of points on a grid on the destination plane. The positions of both planes may be shifted, and the plane normal vectors of both planes may have different directions. Since a scaled Fourier transform is used for the calculation, it can be calculated faster than calculating the diffraction by a Fresnel transform at each point. This technique can be used to calculate and generate planar holograms from computer graphics data.

Simplified homography matrix for a large-scale camera array system.

We want to use a large-scale camera array system in which each camera is placed at the desired position to photograph a subject and later render images of the subject viewed from various directions or render images for a three-dimensional display. The homography matrix for each camera should be calculated in advance to correct the captured images. In the case that each camera is physically facing toward the subject as precisely as possible but the captured image still includes geometrical distortion, if the expected error in the deviations from the ideal directions is assumed to be the zero vector, the homography matrix of each camera can be easily obtained.

Cross talk elimination using an aperture for recording elemental images of integral photography.

A major problem with integral photography using a lens array is overlapping recordings (cross talk) between elemental images. Another problem is the decrease in the number of pixels in the elemental images. We describe two methods (including analyses) of manipulating the aperture of a telecentric optical system to improve these problems. The first method locates the aperture on the focal plane of a field lens. The advantage of this method is that cross talk can be reduced without changing the size of the whole optical system. The second method establishes a telecentric optical system between objects and the lens array. The advantage of this method, even though the whole optical system becomes bigger, is that cross talk can be completely eliminated. In addition, the number of pixels in the elemental images can be increased by varying the aperture position sequentially with respect to time. We also describe how cross talk is reduced in both methods by taking diffraction into consideration. Experimental results are presented to verify this reduction.