Enhanced Quality Holographic Pprojection System

Description

A holographic projector is a new type of image projection system that has significant advantages over existing ones. From the hardware point of view, a holographic projector is not much different to a traditional projector, but instead of directly projecting an optical image, the reconstructed image resulting from the digital hologram is projected. The digital hologram of an image can be generated through numerical computation. In comparison with current image projectors, a holographic projector is brighter, and does not require any lens for focusing. In addition, the projected area can be resized, or moved to different locations simply by modifying a few parameters in the generation of the digital hologram. As such, size of a holographic projector, as well as the cost and the power consumption are much lower than that of a traditional projector. Despite the numerous advantages of a holographic projector, there are 4 major factors that have prohibited it from being utilized, and replacing existing projectors in practice. First, the quality of the image projected by a holographic projector is far from acceptable. This is fatal in the context of image projection as the quality of the projected image is a major concern. Second, the projected image is heavily contaminated with noise, which again is not acceptable in practice. Third, similar to existing projectors, the display area is restricted. Fourth, existing methods that are used to improve the image quality require heavy amount of computation, implying the need of high speed processor(s), higher cost and power consumption, hence defeating the advantages of the holographic projector. More importantly, even with the incorporation of such improvement, some of the aforementioned disadvantages are still not overcome.This proposal aims at the development of a new type of holographic projector to overcome the above-mentioned problems. The proposed holographic projector is based on a novel method that enhances the image quality (as well as lowering the noise level) through an optimization algorithm and high speed spatial filtering, as well as widening the projected area. The Principal Investigator has obtained some positive proof of concept with numerical simulation, and hope that the funding can be utilized to realize develop the proposed holographic projector. All in all, the proposed holographic projector to be developed has the following advantages:• Higher optical efficiency (i.e. brighter)• Low power consumption.• Computation efficient in the hologram generation process.• Does not require focusing lens.• Enhanced projected image quality.• Reduced noise contamination on the projected image.• Wide display area.