A low-resolution 3D holographic volumetric display

A simple low resolution volumetric display is presented, based on holographic volume-segments. The display system comprises a proprietary holographic screen, laser projector, associated optics plus a control unit. The holographic screen resembles a sheet of frosted glass about A4 in size (20x×30cm). The holographic screen is rear-illuminated by the laser projector, which is in turn driven by the controller, to produce simple 3D images that appear outside the plane of the screen. A series of spatially multiplexed and interleaved interference patterns are pre-encoded across the surface of the holographic screen. Each illumination pattern is capable of reconstructing a single holographic volume-segment. Up to nine holograms are multiplexed on the holographic screen in a variety of configurations including a series of numeric and segmented digits. The demonstrator has good results under laboratory conditions with moving colour 3D images in front of or behind the holographic screen. © 2010 SPIE.