NSF Award
8960833
KMSF will develop a real-time display capable of holographically projecting a 3-dimensional image. During the Phase I effort, KMS will research and examine the limitations of the state-of-the-art, analyze existing electronic holography systems, design a mathematical model of a projected holographic display for holographic sterograms and develop an optimized design for a holographic auto-stereoscopic 3-D display. Real-time holographic displays have long been considered impractical due to the extremely high bandwidth and resolution requirements involved. These are based on past analyses of conventional transmission holograms, which provide much more information than a human observer can use. More recent studies have concluded the information content of holograms can be drastically reduced without significant effect upon the visual impact of the image. The required space-bandwidth product can be reduced to that available with commercial spatial light modulators by progressively scanning a smaller hologram to fill out a 3-D viewing space. By utilizing existing computer graphics technology to quickly render perspective views of a three- dimensional object, it should become easier to generate holographic sterograms in real time rather than attempting the more difficult and unnecessary task of directly computing a "real" hologram with diffraction-limited resolution.
