Restoration and Enhancement of Digitally Reconstructed Holographic Images

Holograms can be reconstructed optically or digitally with the use of computers and other related devices. During the reconstruction phase of a hologram by optical or digital methods, some errors may also be introduced that may degrade the quality of obtained hologram, and may lead to a misinterpretation of the holographic image data, which may not be useful for particular application. The basic common errors are zero-order diffraction and speckle noise. These errors have more undesirable effects in digital than in optical holography because the systems of recording and visualization used in the digital holography are extremely sensitive to them or inclusively increase them. The zero-order diffraction can be removed by using high pass filters with low cut-off frequencies and by subtracting the average intensity of all pixels of the hologram image from the original hologram image. Further, the speckle noise introduced during the formation of digital holographic images, which is multiplicative in nature, reduces the image quality, which may not be suitable for specific applications. As the range of applications get broader, demands toward better image quality increases. Hence, the suppression of noise, higher resolution of the reconstructed images, precise parameter adjustment, and faster, more robust algorithms are the essential issues. In this chapter, the various methods available in literature for enhancement and speckle reduction of digital holographic images have been discussed, and a comparative study of results has been presented.