New fully functioning digital hologram recording system and its applications

We propose a low-cost optical system that is able to simply generate computer-generated holograms and rainbow type and true-color Lippmann type holograms. In this system, a microimaging system is applied to reduce the digitized optical data/patterns to achieve about 0.45 mu m of optical resolution for rainbow hologram recording and an about 60-deg viewing angle for the Lippmann hologram. The system is designed as a turn-key machine switching between different operating modes. Custom-generated software is applied to calculate and write digital fringe patterns at real-time speed. Applications for the digital rainbow hologram include computer-generated holograms, anticounterfeiting security labels, 3-D display, and 2-D/3-D truecolor holographic stereogram images for the Lippmann hologram. This single-process synthesizing system can be considered as a fully functioning hologramprinter. (C) 2010 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. [DOI: 10.1117/1.3497068]