Generation of ASCII-art binary holograms (AABHs)

Recent research has proven that if the intensity profile of a source image is down-sampled with a uniform grid-cross sampling lattice and converted into an off-axis Fresnel hologram, the hologram pixels can be quantized into a bi-level (binary) representation with only moderate amount of degradation on the reconstructed image. Despite the success of this approach, the reconstructed image is modulated with a repetitive textural pattern which are visually unappealing. In this paper, we report a method to enhance, through the adoption of ASCII-art mapping, the artistic appearance of the reconstructed image. A binary hologram generated with our proposed method is referred to as an ASCII-art binary hologram (AABH). Experimental results demonstrates that an AAB hologram is capable of reconstructing the source image favorably, and with artistic effect that imparts an interesting and pleasant appearance. © Anita Publications. All rights reserved.