Numerical reconstruction of a full parallax holographic stereogram with radial distortion.

Successful commercialization of holographic printers based on holographic stereograms requires a tool for their numerical replaying and quality assessment before the time-consuming and expensive process of holographic recording. A holographic stereogram encodes 2D images of a 3D scene that are incoherently captured from multiple perspectives and rearranged before recording. This study presents a simulator which builds a full parallax and full color white light viewable holographic stereogram from the perspective images captured by a virtual recentering camera with its further numerical reconstruction for any viewer location. By tracking all steps from acquisition to recording, the simulator allows for analysis of radial distortions caused by the optical elements used at the recording stage. Numerical experiments conducted at increasing degree of pincushion distortion proved its insignificant influence on the reconstructed images in all practical cases by using a peak signal-to-noise ratio and the structural similarity as an image quality metrics.