Refreshed photorefractive buffer memory for permanent readout

Abstract We propose to use holographic photorefractive memories as image buffers to speed up the information transfer from a computer to an optical processor. The images are permanently readout from the holographic memory but are refreshed with the information stored in the electronic computer. This refreshing procedure is compatible with the possibility of selective erasure and updating of one image among all stored images. The set-up has been implemented with the phase encoding technique in a BaTiO 3 crystal.