Application of the correlation coefficient method for determination of the focal plane to digital particle holography

The correlation coefficient (CC) method, which was proposed by our research group, is applied to digital particle holography to locate the focal plane of particles. It uses the fact that the CC is maximum at the focal plane. The factors influencing this method are discussed with a numerical simulation of holograms. For real holograms, the Wiener filter was proposed to process both recorded holograms and reconstructed images. The application results using the dot array target showed that the Wiener filter is a very effective tool for processing holography-related images. The effects of the dot size and the object distance on the errors in the determination of the focal plane by the CC method were investigated by using the calibration target. (c) 2008 Optical Society of America.