66 OPTICS LETTERS / Vol. 18, No.

1 / January 1, 1993

Conoscopic holography: two-dimensional

numerical reconstructions
Laurent M. Mugnier
T6J6comParis, D6partement Images, 46 rue Barrault, F-75634 Paris Cedex 13, France

Gabriel Y. Sirat and Didier Charlot

Le Conoscope S.A., 12 Avenue des Pr6s, F-78180 Montigny Le Bretonneux, France

Received June 29, 1992

Conoscopic holography is an incoherent light holographic technique based on the properties
of crystal optics.
We present experimental results of the numerical reconstruction of a two-dimensional object
from its conoscopic
hologram.

Conoscopicholography (CH) is a spatially incoherent parameter, which depends on the distance between
light holographic technique'- 3 developed primarily the point and the recording plane.3 The first term
as a three-dimensional imaging and measuring in Eq. (1) is the so-called bias, which is an important
technique. Several systems are in development problem in incoherent holography,6 '7 and the second
today; they include a range finder,4 a profilometer, term gives the conjugate image in the reconstruction.
and a microscope. In Ref. 8 we recalled how to modify the system in
We have seen the reconstruction of two-dimensional order to remove the bias and addressed the removal of
objects as an important and necessary step, with the the conjugate image. These improvements are based
aim of characterizing and quantifying the perfor- on numerically combining different system PSF's,
mances of this technique. Indeed, it seems unreason- each of which is obtained by adequately changing the
able to try to reconstruct three-dimensional objects input polarization state [with a liquid-crystal light
before obtaining good two-dimensional image recon- valve (LCLV)]and modulating the amplitude (with a
structions. It is the study of such two-dimensional rotating mask) of the incident light field (see Ref. 8
reconstructions that is presented in this Letter. and Fig. 2). The resulting PSF is shown to be
As with other similar techniques5' 6 each object point
produces, on the recording plane, a Gabor zone pat-
tern (GZP) that encodes both its lateral and longitu- Re(Xy) = exp[iwfr(x2 + y 2 )] . (2)
dinal positions, and the hologram is the incoherent
superposition of such GZP's. In CH, these patterns Re is the sole third term of Eq. (1) and consequently
are formed in the followingway: a uniaxial crystal is will give neither bias nor conjugate image in the
sandwiched between two circular polarizers (Fig. 1); reconstruction. If the object is planar, which is the
in the crystal, the monochromatic wave from each case that we address here, fr is constant, so that the
point is split equally into two (ordinary and extra- relationship between the image I of the object and
ordinary) waves, traveling with different velocities. hologram H is a two-dimensional convolution
These waves are recombined by the output polarizer,
which converts the phase difference into an ampli- H=I®Re. (3)
tude modulation. The hologram is recorded on a
CCD camera rather than on a photographic plate so The reconstruction, which consists of recovering
as to enable its numerical processing. the image I(x,y) of the object (and, possibly, its dis-
When the object is a single monochromatic point tance to the recording plane), is a (linear) deconvo-
and when the crystal axis is parallel to the geo- lution problem. The transfer function of the system
metrical axis Oz of the system, the hologram is the
point-spread function (PSF), R', which is a bias plus
the above-mentioned real GZP1-3:
R+(x,y) 2 {1 + Cos[Ir(X 2
= + y 2 )]}

2 4r 1
= + 4 exp[ -iWrMrX'+ A2)]

+- exp[Ii fr(x 2I y 2 )], (1) Fig. 1. Basic experimental setup. A uniaxial crystal is
4
where x and y are the coordinates in the recording sandwiched between two circular polarizers. When a
point source P illuminates the system, a GZP is observed
plane and fr is a scale factor that we call the Fresnel at the output.
0146-9592/93/010066-03$5.00/0 © 1993 Optical Society of America
 January 1, 1993 / Vol. 18, No. 1 / OPTICS LETTERS 67

Resolution Rotation H'(x,y) = H @ Re'(XY)

Collimated target Stage/
laser A ^ = 1 I(xy) + L(fr'f
47Tfr
iXI(x~
y)X
(7)

where A = a2 /ax2 ±+a2 /ay2 denotes the Laplacian op-

diffuser Polarizer
erator. The imaginary part of the reconstruction
thus contains the edges of the original object for any
nonzero defocus.
A useful parameter for the numerical processing

-
of GZP's is the number of black and white fringes F
recorded on a given sensor; if the sensor is of half-
of two- width R then F is related to the Fresnel parameter
Fig. 2. Experimental setup for the acquisition
dimensional objects. of Eq. (1) by
F = frR2 . (8)
512x512
hologram: 4444~~44~~ 1024x1 024
real and -)- _ complex It has been shown2 that the theoretical maximal
imaginary
parts resolution of the reconstructed image is equal to
Zero padding
Meanvalue
forced to 0 (+ apodizing) the resolution of the hologram itself (that is to say,
the resolution of the CCD sensor) and is achieved
when the hologram is sampled at the Nyquist rate.
The correct sampling condition, for a sensor having

Fig. 3. Numerical processing of the recorded hologram.

FT, Fourier transform.

is given by

fRe(ILV) = f exp4 §-ji2 + v2)]. (4)

This transfer function has a constant modulus so

that the inverse filter is, within a constant factor,
equal to the matched filter (by definition the transfer
function of the matched filter is the conjugate of the Fig. 4. Object (three-bar resolution target) as seen di-
transfer function of the system). Because Re is even,
rectly by the CCD camera.
the matched filter is also, in the spatial domain, the
conjugate of Re. The numerical reconstruction of the
image I consequently appears to be the simulation of
the backpropagation of a coherent light wave from
the hologram to the object plane and reads
1 1 (a)
Re*==I e -8
H e Re*= IJ®Re ®s -I.
fr2 = f2
(5)

Theoretically, the imaginary part of the reconstruc-

tion is zero because the image I is real. In practice,
the imaginary part of the reconstruction is minimum
when the Fresnel parameter frl of the reconstruction
kernel Re' is equal to that of the acquisition (i.e.,
when Re' is equal to Re*)but is not zero. For fr, close
to fr, which corresponds to a slight defocus of the
reconstruction, a first-order Taylor development of
the transfer function of the whole process (acquisition (b)
plus reconstruction) is

Re*Re' ~gj[l + fr2 (/12+ V2)

In the spatial domain, the reconstructed image is Fig. 5. (a) Real and (b) imaginary parts of the recorded
then hologram.
 68 OPTICS LETTERS / Vol. 18, No. 1 / January 1, 1993

Fresnel diffraction pattern at the edges of the re-

constructed image if we did not numerically subtract
its mean value from the hologram. Figures 6(a) and
6(b) show the real and imaginary parts of the numer-
ical reconstruction, which are free from the conjugate
(a) image. Notice that the few dead pixels that are
visible on the lower large horizontal bar of the image
(Fig. 4) are no longer visible on the reconstruction
[Fig. 6(a)], which is due to the information multiplex-
ing feature of the hologram. The number of fringes,
measured by replacing the target with a centered
point source, is F = 112. For any noncentered point,
the number of visible fringes on the sensor will be
greater than this and close to the optimum, i.e., 128.
In the horizontal direction, the comparison between
original and reconstructed images shows that we
(b) have reached the theoretical resolution. The res-
olution is not so good as in the vertical direction
because the CCD sensor is rectangular (and smaller
in the vertical direction). The slight diffraction pat-
tern, consisting of horizontal fringes superimposed
Fig. 6. (a) Real and (b) imaginary parts of the numerical on the reconstructed image, is also an effect of the
reconstruction. truncation of the hologram in the vertical direction.
This defect can be suppressed without significantly
N pixels, takes the simple form decreasing the resolution by apodizing the hologram
with an appropriate window.9
F c N/4. (9) The main goal of the study presented in this Letter
was to characterize CH experimentally. However,
In our setup, N equals 512 so that the optimum in the course of this work, several applications of
number of fringes F is 128. For F smaller than this this technique to two-dimensional objects emerged.
optimum, the resolution (in number of points) of the Indeed, by using CH, it is possible to build a two-
reconstructed image will be lower; more precisely, dimensional imaging system in which the final fo-
the size of a reconstructed point will be the width of cusing step is done after the recording of the data.
the outermost recorded fringe. The main application of such a system would be
We have recorded the conoscopic hologram of a for imaging under unstable conditions, i.e., with a
resolution target on a setup (Fig. 2) consisting of rapidly changing focusing distance. A second pos-
the following: (1) a collimated 10-mW He-Ne laser sible application is to image objects consisting of
that is used for alignment, calibration (acquisition several planes (for example, in microelectronics).
of the PSF), and the acquisition of objects; (2) a In conclusion, we have presented an experimental
three-bar resolution target as object, with a rotating reconstruction from a conoscopic hologram of a (pla-
ground-glass diffuser placed before it to eliminate nar) resolution target that has no conjugate image
speckle; (3) the mask (gray-level slide transferred and reaches the theoretical resolution limit. The
onto a photographic plate) and the PC-driven LCLV quality of the reconstructed image will allow us to
(Meadowlark LVR-0.7-CUS), mounted together on a
present reconstructions of three-dimensional objects
rotation stage (Microcontr6le, also PC driven); (4) a
in the near future.
50-mm f/1.8 Nikkor lens with the mask in its front
focal plane to image the object into the system; and Gabriel Y. Sirat is on leave from T6l6com Paris.
(5) a 50-mm-long calcite crystal (0 = 20 mm), the Didier Charlot was the technical director of Le Cono-
output circular polarizer, and a CCD camera (Cohu scope S.A.
4712) whose images are digitized on 512 X 512 pixels
(Matrox board). References
The different steps of the digital processing that
constitutes the reconstruction are described in Fig. 3. 1. G. Y. Sirat and D. Psaltis, Opt. Lett. 10, 4 (1985).
2. D. Charlot, "Holographie conoscopique, principe et re-
This numerical reconstruction is essentially, as shown constructions num6riques," Ph.D. dissertation (Ecole
above, the simulation of a coherent optical reconstruc- Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications, Paris,
tion. Figure 4 shows the target as seen directly by 1987).
the CCD camera (when the crystal, the mask, and the 3. G. Y. Sirat, J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 9, 70, 84 (1992).
LCLV are removed). Figures 5(a) and 5(b) show the 4. D. Charlot, L. M. Mugnier, and G. Y. Sirat, Proc. Soc.
real and imaginary parts of the recorded hologram. Photo-Opt. Instrum. Eng. 1265, 52 (1990).
The LCLVdelay strongly depends on temperature, 5. A. W. Lohmann, J. Opt. Soc. Am. 55, 1555 (1965).
which accounts for the following imperfection of the 6. G. Cochran, J. Opt. Soc. Am. 56, 1513 (1966).
7. A. Kozma and N. Massey, Appl. Opt. 8, 393 (1969).
PSF: a small leftover bias is present in the imagi- 8. L. M. Mugnier and G. Y. Sirat, Opt. Lett. 17, 294 (1992).
nary part of the hologram and would give a visible 9. F. J. Harris, Proc. IEEE 66, 51 (1978).