P-A Blanche 3D Display

Pierre-Alexandre Blanche, Ph.D.
Assistant Research Professor

Contact Information
Email: pablanche@optics.arizona.edu
1630 East University Blvd, Tucson, AZ 85721
Tel: (520)626-5389

The Holographic 3D display project

Abstract

The aim of this project is to develop an holographic 3D display using photorefractive polymer device (For an overview of different 3D technologies, click here).

Photorefractive polymers are dynamic, and fully reversible holographic recording material (see this section). So they can be used to write, erase, and refresh holograms. By writing the holograms at video rate, we ultimately can make a display.

Holograms are recorded into the polymer using the principle of stereography. This means the diffraction pattern is recorded pixel by pixel, and the data can come from various image sources, like medical instrument, observation satelite, CAD models... And even our own live capture system composed of 16 cameras.

With this system, we demonstrated a telepresence application by filming a person in one room and sending the hologram data over the internet to be printed in another location. There the audience can see that person in 3D.

The current performances we have demonstrated are: 12x12 inches size, full color based on RGB, 2 second recording time (for 4x4"), full parallax, 45° angle of view, no material degradation over 2 years.

Publications

P.-A. Blanche et al., "Holographic three-dimensional telepresence using large-area photorefractive polymer", Nature, vol. 468, issue 7320, pp 80-83 4 November 2010. pdf

P.-A. Blanche et al., “An updatable holographic display for 3D visualization”, IEEE Journal of Display Technology, Special Issue on Medical Displays , invited paper, vol.4, n°4, pp 424-430, (2008). pdf

N. Peyghambarian et al., “Rewritable holographic 3-D displays”, optics and Photonics News , invited paper, Vol.19, No. 7/8, pp 22-27 and cover, July/August 2008. pdf

S. Tay et al., “An updateable holographic 3D display”, Nature 451, 694-698, (2008). pdf

Images and videos (click to play or enlarge)

Color, full parallax, telepresence (November 2010)