Battelle Memorial Institute

Battelle Development Corporation

Rand C Sherman

Richard P Kenan

Daniel R Grieser

An optical processing system uses spatial filtering to recognize two-dimensional functions and images. Images of real objects are captured with a television camera. The electronic signals representing the two-dimensional function or image are electronically preprocessed, such as by edge enhancement techniques or by applying a curvature function, and displayed on a narrow-band-phosphor cathode ray tube or television monitor. The monitor image is used directly as the input to an incoherent holographic correlator. Alternatively, the monitor image is used to modulate a source of coherent radiation such as a laser via a spatial light modulator to generate a modulated optical signal which is the input to a coherent holographic correlator. Analyzer circuitry with an optical detector at the correlation plane analyzes the shape of the correlation function to determine the intensity and position of its peak. The input to the CRT or monitor may also be in the form of non-optically generated electronic signals representative of a two-dimensional function for display in graphic form by the CRT or monitor.

Optical correlator using electronic image preprocessing

A method of forming and reading a hologram, useful for instance as a lens, is disclosed which eliminates chromatic aberrations usually present when a hologram is recorded using light of a higher frequency than that for which the hologram is to be used on reconstruction. The fringes created by the interference of two beams of radiation at the recording frequency in a first medium are transferred to a recording second medium by virtue of the second medium having a surface contiguous to the fringes in the first medium. The second medium is then developed to produce a hologram. A reconstruction beam from a laser having a lower frequency than that of the recording beams is directed at a third medium which is contiguous to a surface of the hologram so as to cause the wavelength of the read-out beam to equal that of the recording beams.

Growing community of inventors

Upper Arlington, OH, United States of America

Rand C Sherman