Hologram synthesis for photorealistic reconstruction

Computation of diffraction patterns, and thus holograms, of scenes with photorealistic properties is a highly complicated and demanding process. An algorithm, based primarily on computer graphics methods, for computing full-parallax diffraction patterns of complicated surfaces with realistic texture and reflectivity properties is proposed and tested. The algorithm is implemented on single-CPU, multiple-CPU and CPU platforms. An alternative algorithm, which implements reduced occlusion diffraction patterns for much faster but somewhat lower quality results, is also developed and tested. The algorithms allow GPU-aided calculations and easy parallelization. Both numerical and optical reconstructions are conducted. The results indicate that the presented algorithms compute diffraction patterns that provide successful photorealistic reconstructions; the computation times are acceptable especially on the GPU implementations. (C) 2008 Optical Society of America