New and direct optical analog-to-digital conversion method.

A new method for performing direct optical analog-to-digital conversion is presented. The technique requires utilization of a specifically designed and fabricated conversion screen. Either coherent or incoherent light sources may be used; hence a wide range of applications is possible. Arithmetic operations of the resultant digital outputs are defined so that the technique can be used to make real-time preprocessors for optical logic circuits, such as half adders or residue-arithmetic optical computers.