Ultrafast holographic topometry of the face for medical applications

Abstract For planning, simulation and documentation of interventions in maxillofacial surgery high resolving soft tissue information of the human face is needed. This information can be gained by holographic methods, which allow a recording of the whole face in an extremely short time period, so that no movement artefacts occur. In order to utilize the three-dimensional information stored in a hologram for medical applications, the hologram has to be optically reconstructed and digitized. Illumination of the hologram with the complex conjugate reference beam leads to a three-dimensional real image of the recorded face, which can be digitized into a set of two-dimensional projections and merged to a three-dimensional computer model.