Method and system for three dimensional digital holographic aperture synthesis

A system comprising:

• a laser temporally-modulated waveform source configured to produce a target beam and a reference beam each with a bandwidth B and duration D;
• an array of one or more optical detectors in a plane perpendicular to the target beam;
• a display device;
• at least one processor;
• and
• at least one memory including one or more sequences of instructions,
• the at least one memory and the one or more sequences of instructions configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to perform at least the following,
• collecting, for a plurality of sampling conditions, first data that indicates amplitude and phase of light relative to the reference beam received at each of a plurality of different times during the duration D at each optical detector of the array of one or more optical detectors;
• synthesizing the first data for the plurality of sampling conditions to form one or more synthesized sets;
• performing a 3D Fourier transform of each synthesized set to form a digital model of the target for each synthesized set;
• and
• operating the display device based at least in part on at least a portion of the digital model of the target for at least one synthesized set.