Multi-dimensional Imaging

Chapter 2Imaging and Display of Human Size Scenes by Long Wavelength Digital Holography

Massimiliano Locatelli¹, Eugenio Pugliese¹, Melania Paturzo², Vittorio Bianco², Andrea Finizio², Anna Pelagotti¹, Pasquale Poggi¹, Lisa Miccio², Riccardo Meucci¹ and Pietro Ferraro²

¹CNR, Istituto Nazionale di Ottica, Largo E. Fermi, Italy

²CNR, Istituto Nazionale di Ottica, Sezione di Napoli, Italy

2.1 Introduction

This chapter is devoted to the description of Digital Holography (DH) [1–4] in the infrared region. As we will see, this portion of the electromagnetic spectrum offers interesting and useful opportunities for imaging purposes from various points of view. Infrared Radiation Digital Holography (IRDH) is an almost unexplored research field. Recently, new breakthrough potentialities of IRDH have been demonstrated, allowing us to overcome some of the most binding conditions of DH at visible wavelengths. Hence, a completely new class of products can be provided, taking advantage of the longer wavelength employed, thus involving out-of-lab applications to be exploited in the field of safety. The next sections will be devoted to showing such capabilities.

2.2 Digital Holography Principles

A hologram is the recorded interference pattern between two waves emitted by a coherent source. The wavefront impinging on the target of interest, which is scattered toward the recording device, is commonly referred to as the object beam, whereas the wave directly reaching the detector is the reference ...