Events meet phase-shifting digital holography: practical acquisition, theory, and algorithms.

Recently, it has become necessary to detect cracks in structures such as buildings and bridges. Phase-shifting digital holography is one valuable method that can be used to measure the strain distribution on the surface of an object. However, to simplify the optical measurement setup, more compact equipment is required. An interferometric trigger method with dual piezo actuators for phase shifting is proposed. This method is useful for designing a head discrete-type measurement system that uses phase-shifting digital holography with multiple imaging sensors. The ability to phase shift using the proposed trigger method was confirmed with the reconstruction of an object and an experiment that was performed to measure the displacement distribution.

An experimental comparison of four methods of wavefront reconstruction is presented. We considered two iterative and two holographic methods with differences in mathematical models and reconstruction algorithms. The first two of these methods do not use the reference wave in the recording scheme that reduces the need of setup stability. A set of spatial intensity measurements of a volume scattered field plays the main role in phase retrieval in such methods. The obtained data are sequentially used for iterative wavefront reconstruction. Iterative approach involves numerical wavefront propagation between various planes of the volume scattered fiels. Throughout this procedure the phase information of the wavefront is retained while the calculated amplitudes is replaced by the square root of the intensity distributions measured in corresponding planes. In the first compared phase retrieval method (FRIM), a two-dimensional Fresnel transform and iterative calculation in the object plane are used as a mathematical model. In the second method (SBMIR), the angular spectrum is used for numerical wavefront propagation, and iterative calculation is made only between closely spaced planes for data registration. Two methods of digital holography, which we compared, differ from each other in algorithm of a waverfont reconstruction. The first holographic method (CWR-DH) uses the conception of spatial phase steps for complex wave retrieval, and the second method (FT-DH) is a widespread Fourier transformation method. All methods provide satisfactory capacity for image reconstruction. The results of the comparison showed that FRIM produces better quality of reconstruction, but a diffraction artifacts takes place at the boundaries of the reconstructed image. Taking this into account we can conclude that the CWR-DH method is the best among considered.

When phase-shifting digital holography with a continuous fringe-scanning scheme is implemented using a PC-based measurement system without any synchronous circuit, nonuniform phase-shifted interference fringes are captured because of the fluctuation in the image-capturing interval. To cope with the nonuniform phase shifts, a statistical generalized phase-shifting approach is employed. Because the algorithm is designed to use an arbitrary phase shift, the nonuniform phase shifts do not obstruct object-wave retrieval. Moreover, multiple interference fringes can be obtained in a short time owing to the continuous fringe-scanning scheme. However, the wavefront calculation method is not designed for sequentially recorded interference fringes. To use multiple interference fringes appropriately, we develop a least-squares wavefront calculation method combined with corrections for the initial phase and the direction of phase rotation. We verify the proposed method by numerical simulations and optical experiments. The results show that the object wave with the same initial phase can be correctly reconstructed by using both phase correction methods simultaneously.

The event-based vision sensors (EVS) are biology-inspired devices designed to capture the detailed movement of objects and are applied as the “eyes” of machines such as factory automation robots. Compared to conventional frame-based image sensors as employed in video cameras, EVS has an extremely fast motion capture equivalent to 10,000-fps even with standard optical settings and additionally has high dynamic ranges for brightness and also lower consumption of memory and energy.Here, we developed 22 characteristic features for analysing the motions of aquatic particles from the raw data of the EVS and deployed the EVS system in both natural environments and laboratory aquariums to test its applicability to filming and analysing plankton behaviour.In the session, we will present the results of behavioral analyses of jellyfish and plankton conducted using the EVS in the laboratory, as well as experimental findings from direct observations of biological and non-biological particles, such as plankton, larvae, and sinking aggregates, using the EVS enclosed in a pressure-resistant container.

We propose a parallel two-step phase-shifting digital holography technique capable of instantaneous measurement of three-dimensional objects, with a view toward measurement of dynamically moving objects. The technique is based on phase-shifting interferometry. The proposed technique carries out the two-step phase-shifting method at one time and can be optically implemented by using a phase-shifting array device located in the reference beam. The array device has a periodic two-step phase distribution, and its configuration is simplified compared with that required for three-step and four-step parallel phase-shifting digital holographies. Therefore the optical system of the proposed technique is more suitable for the realization of a parallel phase-shifting digital holography system. We conduct both a numerical simulation and a preliminary experiment in the proposed technique. The results of the simulation and the experiment agree well with those of sequential phase-shifting digital holography, and results are superior to those obtained by conventional digital holography using the Fresnel transform alone. Thus the effectiveness of the proposed technique is verified.

This paper proposes a new method that reconstructs the information of specimen by using random phase shift step in digital holographic microscopy (DHM). The principles of the method are described and discussed in detail. In practical experiment, because the phase shifter is neither perfectly linear nor calibrated, digital holograms with inaccurate phase shift step are recorded by the charge-coupled device (CCD). The phase could be accurately reconstructed from the recorded digital holograms by using the random phase-shifting algorithm, which makes up for reconstructed phase error caused by ordinary phase-shifting algorithm. The phase aberration compensation is also discussed. In order to verify the flexibility of the proposed method, numerical simulation of random phase-shifting DHM was carried out. The simulation results illustrated that the presented method is effective when the phase shift step is unknown or random in DHM.

Phase-shifting digital holography has been used for the study of vibrating objects. The time-averaged complex amplitude of Fresnel diffracted field due to a vibrating object was obtained by using a three-step phase-shifting algorithm. Taking the inverse Fresnel transform of the complex amplitude resulted in an image of the object superimposed with Bessel fringes. The Bessel fringes are contour map of the vibration amplitude. By sinusoidally modulating the phase of the reference beam at the vibration frequency, the brightest fringe could be shifted to points of interest, thus extending the measurable range of vibration amplitude.

A direct phase shift extraction and wavefront reconstruction method in two-step generalized phase-shifting interferometry (GPSI) with arbitrary unknown phase shift is proposed. In this method the unknown phase shift α can be extracted by a determinate formula directly without iteration or additional judgment of its correct value from two or more phase shift solutions as necessary before. By an appropriate formula of GPSI the complex object field in the recording plane can be calculated and then the object wavefront in the original object plane obtained. This method is applicable for GPSI of any frame number K≥2 and for both the amplitude and phase objects. Computer simulations have shown that the phase shift extraction errors are below 0.01 rad in a wide range of 0.4 rad<α<2.6 rad and the computation time is greatly reduced by a factor of about 20 compared with the previous method. The effectiveness and accuracy of this method are also verified by optical experiments.

Wave front reconstruction by means of phase-shifting digital in-line holography

An algorithm is proposed for extraction of the unknown phase shift steps and correction of the phase shift error in partially coherent illuminated phase-shifting digital holography. The mean contrast of noise (MCN) of the reconstructed amplitude image is developed to evaluate the noise level resulting from phase shift error. Actual phase shift steps are first extracted by minimizing the MCN. Then the extracted actual phase shift steps are used to retrieve the original object wave without phase shift error. The validity of the proposed method is verified by simulations, and then implemented in partially coherent illuminated phase-shifting digital holography where a spatial light modulator with unknown phase modulation characteristic is used as the phase shifter. The results demonstrated that the actual phase shift steps can be extracted and the phase shift error is corrected effectively.

This demonstration shows how an inexpensive high frame-rate USB camera is used to emulate existing and proposed activity-driven event-based vision sensors. A PS3-Eye camera which runs at a maximum of 125 frames/second with colour QVGA (320×240) resolution is used to emulate several event-based vision sensors, including a Dynamic Vision Sensor (DVS), a colour-change sensitive DVS (cDVS), and a hybrid vision sensor with DVS+cDVS pixels. The emulator is integrated into the jAER software project for event-based real-time vision and is used to study use cases for future vision sensor designs.

State of drying paint is monitored from the dynamic behaviors of images reconstructed by phase-shifting digital holography. For quantitative analysis cross-correlation coefficient of complex amplitude, named here, coherence factor, between successive frames with an interval of 20 s. Its modulus shows variation indicating the random dynamic behavior of the paint surface, while its phase is apparently related with the change of paint thickness. In the dried state they reach stationary values. The modulus has been shown to relate to the degree of speckle correlation in the model of Gaussian random process.

We propose an algorithm that can improve the quality of the reconstructed image from the single hologram recorded by the optical system of the parallel four-step phase-shifting digital holography. The proposed algorithm applies the image-reconstruction algorithm of parallel two-step phase-shifting digital holography to the hologram so as to reduce errors in the reconstructed image and eliminate ghosts. We numerically and experimentally confirmed that the proposed algorithm decreased 25% in terms of root mean square error in amplitude, and eliminated the ghosts, respectively.

Image quality improvement using speckle method in in-line digital holography by means of multi-mode fiber

We propose an auto-focusing method in digital holography by computing the first order longitudinal difference among adjacent reconstruction planes. Our method is experimentally demonstrated for the refocusing of different kinds of objects. It is shown that our method is robust and faster than other representative methods. Our method may find applications in long-term investigations of living cells, where fast adjustment of numerical focus is required.