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Electronic Holographic Displays: 20 Years of Interactive Spatial Imaging

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Handbook of Visual Display Technology

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Abstract

This chapter reviews the first 20 years of interactive electro-holographic displays and holographic video – from first instance in 1990 through recent innovations in computational approaches and photonic modulation schemes. The enormous computational and photonic challenges required to interactively generate three-dimensional (3D) holographic images are examined, along with descriptions of techniques used to overcome the limitations on holographic computation and high-bandwidth photonic modulation. Included are the techniques of bipolar fringe computation, diffraction-specific fringe computation, and utilization of computer graphics hardware, as well as the scanned acousto-optic modulation technique (used in early display systems) and the liquid-crystal modulation technologies used in recent holographic displays.

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Abbreviations

AOM:

Acousto-optic modulator

DMD:

Digital micro-mirror device

GPU:

Graphical processing unit

Hogel:

Holographic element

HPO:

Horizontal-parallax-only

MAC:

Multiplication accumulation

SLM:

Spatial light modulator

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to acknowledge the support of the following: the Department of Defense of the United States of America, and in particular the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL); Zebra Imaging, Inc.; the late Professor Stephen A. Benton of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and our former colleagues who helped make early holovideo possible, including Michael Halle, Mary Lou Jepsen, Nicholas Negroponte, Wendy J. Plesniak, Pierre St. Hilaire, John D. Sutter, John Underkoffler, and Hiroshi Yoshikawa. The author would also like to acknowledge contributions from the team at Zebra Imaging who helped to create the UPSD prototype display systems: Alex Nankervis, Alton Hill, Amos Smith, Amy Lessner, Angelo Fancello, Anthony Heath, Craig Newswanger, Dan Siegel, Dustin Henry, Eric Huang, Gary McElroy, James Roberts, Keith Gardner, Kendall James, Matt Fowler, Meagan Noble, Michael Weiblen, Oliver Greaves, Sean O’Connell, Rick Tolar, Rudy Guerrero, Thomas Burnett, Tizhi Huang, and Wesley Holler.

The RealityEngine2 graphics framebuffer system was manufactured by Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA. It is the forerunner of video cards and graphics cards, such as the GPU-based technologies from Nvidia Corp., AMD Corp. (and its ATI technology), and Intel Corp.

Some portions of this chapter are based on a previous publication by the author in SIGGRAPH’s “Current, New, and Emerging Display Systems,” Computer Graphics (a publication of ACM SIGGRAPH) volume 31, number 2, pp. 63–67, 1997 May.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nanohmics, Inc., 6201 E. Oltorf St., Ste. 400, Austin, TX, 78741, USA

    Mark E. Lucente

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  1. Mark E. Lucente
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Correspondence to Mark E. Lucente .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Industrial Technology Research Institute Display Technology Center, Hsin Chu, Taiwan

    Janglin Chen

  2. Nottingham Trent University School of Computing & Informatics, Nottingham, United Kingdom

    Wayne Cranton

  3. Veritas et Visus, Temple, TX, USA

    Mark Fihn

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Lucente, M.E. (2015). Electronic Holographic Displays: 20 Years of Interactive Spatial Imaging. In: Chen, J., Cranton, W., Fihn, M. (eds) Handbook of Visual Display Technology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35947-7_119-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35947-7_119-2

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-35947-7

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