Unlike conventional displays, where each pixel is perceived individually, holograms do not have a one-to-one correspondence between individual pixel values and the perception of individual points in space. Holograms rather use interference fringes that – once illuminated with light – create a collective interference pattern over the billions of tiny pixels, lighting up some points in space, while others are dimmed. This creates some immunity against incorrect pixel values, but the weak point is that holograms need a gigantic number of pixels (billions; not millions), which results in technological challenges, especially when using grayscale pixels.
The thesis explores the potential of transforming grayscale pixels (typically what one obtains when capturing a hologram with laser light on a photographic emulsion) into binary pixels (the easiest modality for printing a hologram), satisfying the interference constraints. Clearly, for obtaining the same perceived hologram, much more is needed than thresholding the grayscale pixels towards binarization; optimization techniques (exposed in a couple of papers) must be implemented.
The thesis student will simulate the interference constraints into the OpenHolo simulation environment (OpenHolo.org), making comparisons between grayscale holograms and their binary companions. Satisfactory simulation results will lead to printing the binary holograms for real.

Prerequisites: good C++ programming skills. Familiarity with digital holography is a plus, but is not mandatory. Likewise, experience with GPU programming is a plus to speed up the OpenHolo processing.

Keywords: holographic simulation

Promotor: Gauthier Lafruit

Contact: gauthier.lafruit@ulb.ac.be (or soon gauthier.lafruit@ulb.be)

Support: Sarah Fachada