Bimodal Incoherent Digital Holography for Both Three-Dimensional Imaging and Quasi-Infinite–Depth-of-Field Imaging

Abstract

Although three-dimensional (3D) imaging and extended depth-of-field (DOF) imaging are completely opposite techniques, both provide much more information about 3D scenes and objects than does traditional two-dimensional imaging. Therefore, these imaging techniques strongly influence a wide variety of applications, such as broadcasting, entertainment, metrology, security and biology. In the present work, we derive a generalised theory involving incoherent digital holography to describe both 3D imaging and quasi-infinite–DOF (QIDOF) imaging, which allows us to comprehensively discuss the functions of each imaging technique. On the basis of this theory, we propose and develop a bimodal incoherent digital holography system that allows both 3D imaging and QIDOF imaging. The proposed system allows imaging objects using spatially incoherent light and reconstructing 3D images or QIDOF images solely by changing the phase pattern of a spatial light modulator and without requiring mechanical adjustments or any other modifications to the setup. As a proof-of-principle experiment, we evaluate the DOF and record holograms of a reflective object with the proposed system. The experimental results show that the generalised theory is effective; our demonstration platform provides the function of 3D and QIDOF imaging.

Roadmap of incoherent digital holography

“…Both 3D and infinite DOF imaging offer a novel means of expression in photography and broadcasting by providing images that are more informative than those obtained using a conventional 2D camera. A bimodal IDH system [47] was proposed to implement and switch the functions 3D imaging and infinite DOF imaging in a common geometry. Figure 16 shows the schematic of the bimodal IDH system.…”

“…Full-color holographic 3D imaging of natural light has been also performed using a Michelson-type selfinterference optical system [44]. 3D imaging with changing phase masks displayed on the SLM for deep-focus imaging [47] and PSF improvement in 3D space [48] have been also proposed. Such proposals improve the specifications of incoherent holographic imagers.…”

Review of Incoherent Digital Holography: Applications to Multidimensional Incoherent Digital Holographic Microscopy and Palm-Sized Digital Holographic Recorder—Holosensor

“…Any light source including self-luminous light and natural light can be recorded as a hologram. Various techniques such as 3D microscopy for self-luminous light (Schilling et al, 1997;Rosen and Brooker, 2008;Jang et al, 2015;Yanagawa et al, 2015;Quan et al, 2017;Liebel et al, 2020a;Liebel et al, 2020b;Kumar et al, 2020;Marar and Kner, 2020;Potcoava et al, 2021), 3D imaging with a single image sensor (Kim, 2013;Clark and Kim, 2015;Jang et al, 2015;Vijayakumar et al, 2016;Vijayakumar and Rosen, 2017;Nobukawa et al, 2018;Choi et al, 2019;Nobukawa et al, 2019;Wu et al, 2020;Tahara et al, 2021d;Wu et al, 2021;Yoneda et al, 2021;Tahara et al, 2022), 3D thermal measurement (Imbe, 2019), and spectroscopic 3D imaging (Yoshimori, 2001;Teeranutranont and Yoshimori, 2013;Naik et al, 2014;Kalenkov et al, 2019) have been proposed to date. Research on applications of IDH is ongoing and a challenging theme.…”