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US 5,138,471 AGranted
Holocomposer
OwnerStephen P. McGrewinventor
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method is disclosed for making holographic images by recording an array of pixels which together form a two or three dimensional composite image. Each pixel corresponds to a sampling of just those rays which would pass through a given point on the surface of an ordinary hologram. Every common type of hologram can be made by this method, including 2D/3D holograms, stereograms, and full color holograms. Each pixel is a white light viewable hologram generated by recording a small hologram near the narrowest part of a converging bundle of rays of coherent light, usually with each ray corresponding to one point on the object, and the rays in a pixel being confined to a horizontal plane intersecting the surface of the object.
Claims24
An apparatus for making holograms having a plurality of pixels comprising:
- means for forming with coherent light an object beam corresponding to a bundle of image rays reflected from a line portion of an object and passing through a predetermined point positioned away from the surface of said object, said object beam converging to a relatively small real focus;
- a recording medium positioned at a location such that said real focus is proximate to the surface of said recording medium, each of said pixels being a hologram of ray bundles converging substantially to a relatively small real focus point on the recording medium;
- and
- means for forming a reference beam with coherent light and directing said reference beam onto said recording medium proximate to said object beam to record a hologram pixel on said recording medium.
1 more element
An apparatus for composing holograms of an object, comprising:
- an image recording means for recording a plurality of images of an object on a first recording medium, said recording means causing each of said images of said object to contain a view of said object which is different from the view in each other image;
- transferring means for transferring horizontal lines from said images on said first recording medium to single pixels on a second recording medium to create pixel holograms of said horizontal image lines;
- composing means for composing a composite hologram on said second recording medium, said composite hologram having a plurality of pixels and being comprised of elemental hologram pixels, each of said pixels being a hologram of a planar ray bundle from said image, each pixel being from a different horizontal line of image data.
A method of recording holograms, comprising:
- spatially modulating a light beam to form an object beam corresponding to a planar bundle of rays emanting from points on a line portion of an image;
- configuring said object beam to converge to a small region on a recording medium;
- intersecting said object beam with a reference beam on said small region of said recording medium, thereby forming a holographic pixel in the form of an interference pattern;
- and
- repeating the previous steps for a plurality of planar ray bundles and corresponding regions upon said recording medium to construct a composite hologram of said object.
2 more elements
A method of recording holograms, comprising:
- forming a converging ray bundle object beam which converges from points on a line portion of an image to a small point-like region on a recording medium;
- intersecting said object beam with a reference beam on said recording medium thereby forming and recording an interference pattern on said point-like region on said recording medium;
- and
- repeating the previous steps for a plurality of said regions upon said recording medium to construct a composite hologram of a two-dimensional image.
1 more element
A method of recording a hologram, comprising:
- determining a ray bundle corresponding to straight lines connecting a plurality of points on a line portion of an object to a point in a plane;
- forming an object beam corresponding to said ray bundle;
- converging said object beam to a small point-like region on a recording medium;
- intersecting said object beam with a reference beam on said small region of said recording medium, thereby forming an interference pattern to record a hologram on said region;
- and
- repeating the previous steps for a plurality of regions on said recording medium to construct a composite hologram of an object.
3 more elements
A method for making a composite hologram, comprising:
- recording with a video camera a series of video images of an object from different perspectives along a line as said video camera moves along said line;
- processing the information in said images to determine a series of planar ray bundles, each of said ray bundles corresponding to image rays converging from a plurality of points in said object to a point on said line;
- and
- recording said ray bundles as elemental hologram pixels on a recording medium, the relatively position of each pixel on said recording medium corresponding to the position of the corresponding said point on said line for said ray bundle, wherein a single raster scan line of one frame is recorded as a single pixel on said recording medium and a vertical adjacent raster scan line is recorded in the correspondingly vertical adjacent position on said recording medium, said entire frame being recorded as a single vertical line of pixels.
1 more element
A composite hologram that provides a three dimensional image when illuminated in white light, said hologram comprising:
- a recording medium adapted to record therein image inforamtion;
- a plurality of holographic pixels recorded on said recording medium, said holographic pixels each being point-like holograms that contain information from only a single, narrow line portion of an image, each of said pixels having information from a different, single narrow line portion of said image than from each other pixel in said composite hologram, such that each of said pixels has the capacity to reconstruct only a single narrow line portion of an image, and said pixels together have the capacity to reconstruct a three dimensional image of said image when illuminated in white light.
A composite hologram, comprising:
- a plurality of sequentially recorded holographic point-like pixels, each of said pixels containing only information about a single horizontal line portion through an image;
- and
- a holographic medium bearing said holographic pixels arranged thereupon in a dense array, said pixels in any selected horizontal line on said medium containing only information about said single horizontal line through said image, each of said pixels in said any selected horizontal line further each containing only information about said image corresponding to a perspective view of said image from the location of each of said pixels on said medium, and said dense array of pixels comprising a white light viewable hologram of said image.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.