Improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio in digital holography

A fundamental problem in optical and digital holography is the presence of speckle noise in the reconstruction process, which essentially diminishes the signal to noise ratio (SNR). For many applications, that reduction of the SNR makes the digital holography impractical, so great number of approaches have been carried out in order to overcome such a problem. They range from modifying the spatial coherence of the illumination to the application of image processing techniques. In this paper we propose the merged use of digital image processing techniques in order to increase this SNR by reducing the speckle noise in the digital reconstruction of optically recorded Fresnel's holograms. The proposed techniques are illustrated with experimental results.