Stereoscopic Viewing of Digital Holograms of Real-World Objects

We have studied the use of conventional stereoscopic displays for the viewing of digital holograms of real-world three-dimensional (3D) objects captured using phase-shift interferometry. Although digital propagation of holograms can be performed efficiently, only one depth-plane of the scene is in focus in each reconstruction. Reconstruction at every depth to create an extended-focus image is a time-consuming process. We investigate the human visual system's ability to perceive 3D objects in the presence of blurring when different depth reconstructions are presented to each eye. Our digital holograms are sufficiently large that subregions can be digitally propagated to generate the necessary stereo disparity. The holograms also encode sufficient depth information to produce parallax. We find that our approach allows 3D perception of objects encoded in digital holograms with significantly reduced reconstruction computation time compared to extended focus image creation.