Operational and convolution properties of three-dimensional Fourier transforms in spherical polar coordinates

For functions that are best described with spherical coordinates, the three-dimensional Fourier transform can be written in spherical coordinates as a combination of spherical Hankel transforms and spherical harmonic series. However, to be as useful as its Cartesian counterpart, a spherical version of the Fourier operational toolset is required for the standard operations of shift, multiplication, convolution, etc. This paper derives the spherical version of the standard Fourier operation toolset. In particular, convolution in various forms is discussed in detail as this has important consequences for filtering. It is shown that standard multiplication and convolution rules do apply as long as the correct definition of convolution is applied. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America