Optik 131 (2017) 312316

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Optik
journal homepage: www.elsevier.de/ijleo

Original research article

Improved angular multiplexing method with polarization

interference for enhancing the resolution of digital
holographic image
Ping Wang
School of Electronics and Control Engineering, Changan University, Xian 710064, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: An improved angular multiplexing method is proposed with polarization interference to
Received 24 August 2016 enhance the resolution of digital holographic image. Samples are illuminated by using two
Received in revised form 2 November 2016 orthogonally polarized laser beams with different incidence angles as these object beams
Accepted 18 November 2016
correspondingly carrying low and high frequency of spatial information. A linearly polarized
reference beam with a 45 polarized angle relative to the two object beams is introduced
Keywords: to interfere with object beams and form two resulting sub-holograms simultaneously
Digital holography
recording in one frame with more frequency information maintained. The resolution of the
Resolution improvement
reconstructed digital holographic is improved with compensation of the high frequency
Polarization interference
Angular multiplexing information. Experimental results show the feasibility and effectiveness of this method.
2016 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Digital holography allows fast, nondestructive, full-eld and 3D measurement and hence it has been adopted in many
application elds, such as ow eld measurement [1,2], vibration analysis [3], 3D object recognition [4], particles characteri-
zation [5,6], digital holographic microscopy [710], etc. In digital holography, the resolution of the reconstructed holographic
image is determined by the space-bandwidth product of the holographic system. However, the limited size and relatively
low cutoff frequency of the CCD camera used to record digital hologram poses an important restriction on the imaging
capability of a digital holographic system.
Compared with off-axis digital holography, the in-line digital holographic system is more effective in the use of CCDs
space-bandwidth product. However, the zero-order and twin image problem is a serious obstacle in achieving a high-quality
output in-line holography. Phase-shifting methods are usually used to solve this problem, which is time consuming and not
suitable for dynamical specimens [11]. In addition, synthetic aperture method has been presented to improve the system
aperture and reconstruction resolution in off-axis digital holography. Massig and Tippie et al. shifted CCD to different off-axis
positions to obtain an expanded aperture [12,13]. To increase the area and pixel number of the recorded hologram, linear CCD
scanning technique is used by Di et al. instead of area CCD to record digital lensless Fourier transform hologram and obtain
holographic images with high resolution and a wide eld of view [14]. However, this technique is time-consuming and not
suitable for dynamic measurement in time. Other improvement such as diffraction grating was used by Liu and Granero et al.
to re-direct additional high-order spatial frequency contents of the object wave onto a nite-sized CCD target [15,16]. This
is an equivalent way to improve the space-bandwidth product and reconstruction resolution, but the xed grating period

E-mail address: pingwang@chd.edu.cn

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijleo.2016.11.100
0030-4026/ 2016 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
 P. Wang / Optik 131 (2017) 312316 313

Fig. 1. Experimental setup for recoding digital hologram using angular multiplexing method with polarization interference. BS, non-polarization beam
splitter; M, mirrors; MO, microscopic objective; PH, pinhole; L, lens; HWP, half wave plate. Inset: 3D interference sketch map between the reference beam
and the two object beams. kO 1 , kO 2 and kR are the direction vector of the object beams O1 , O2 and reference beam R.

and CCD spatial resolution restrict its optical structure and measurement eld. Another way to achieve high-resolution
imaging in digital holography is to simultaneously record the low and high frequency of samples spatial information with
multi-direction illumination beams and angular multiplexing technique [17], but there is an interference crosstalk between
the two sub-holograms during the recording process reducing the resulting accuracy. Angular multiplexing technique may
solve the problem of crosstalk with ultrashort pulsed laser as presented by Yuan et al. [18]. The time delays between three
pairs of pulses from an ultrashort pulsed laser are adjusted to separate the low and high spatial frequency information based
on the high cost ultrashort pulsed laser and accurate adjustment of the testing system to ensure incoherent overlapping
of the sub-holograms. An angular multiplexing method with incoherent beams in orthogonal polarization states is further
proposed by Yan et al. [19] that two separate Mach-Zehnder interferometers with orthogonal polarization states are used
for recording low and high spatial frequency information respectively rely on a complicated optical structure. Moreover,
Wang and Jiang et al. [20,21] proposed different digital holography approach to realize the resolution enhancement with
the help of microsphere or random phase plate which may limit its applications.
In this paper, a new improved angular multiplexing method is proposed with polarization interference. Two orthogo-
nally polarized laser beams are employed to illuminate samples with different incidence angles as object beams. The on-axis
and off-axis illumination beams allow recording the low and high spatial frequency information of samples in one frame.
A linearly polarized reference beam with a 45 polarized angle relative to the plane of two object beams is introduced to
interfere with the two object beams and form two off-axis sub-holograms simultaneously. Different polarization states of
the three beams help to remove the unwanted interference crosstalk between the two sub-holograms. Angular multiplex-
ing technique allows the spatial spectra of the sub-holograms to be separated from each other in the frequency domain
based on Fourier transformation. Finally, a resolution improved digital holographic image is achieved by combining the two
holographic images independently that reconstructed from the two sub-holograms with low and high spatial frequency
information together. Compared with the double Mach-Zehnder interferometer system in Reference [18], this method is
simple and effective to make the optical setup compact. Experimental results show the validity of this method.

2. Experimental setup and theoretical analysis

Fig. 1 shows the experimental setup for recoding the multiple digital hologram by using angular multiplexing method
with polarization interference. A linearly polarized beam with vertical polarization state from a He-Ne laser ( = 632.8 nm)
is divided into two parts by beam splitter BS1 . One acts as the object beam and the other as the reference beam. They are
expanded and collimated by microscope objective MO and lens L, respectively. Between MO and L, a pinhole PH is used as a
spatial lter. The object beam is further divided into two parts by beam splitter BS2 . The reected beam O1 passes through
a half wave plate (HWP) whose fast axis has a 45 angle relative to the vertical axis. It illuminates the samples vertically
with horizontal polarization state. The transmitted beam O2 with a vertical polarization state is reected by mirror M2 and
illuminates the samples directly with a small incident angle. At the same time, the plane reference beam R passes through
a HWP whose fast axis is set at an angle of 22.5 relative to the vertical axis, so the reference beam R has a 45 polarization
angle with the vertical axis. Both beams pass through beam splitter BS3 and interfere with each other on the CCD target.
A digital hologram composed by two sub-holograms is recorded using a CCD with 1626 1326 pixels and the pixel size
4.4 m 4.4 m. The sample is a WT1005-62 resolution test target. Here the object beam O1 and O2 carry low and high
frequency information of samples and interfere with the reference beam R, respectively. The orthogonal polarization states
of the object wave O1 and O2 avoid the crosstalk between two sub-holograms. The 3D interference sketch map between the
reference beam R and the two object beams O1 and O2 are shown in the inset of Fig. 1. Its the polarization interference of
the three different linearly polarized states beams.
Taking oi (x, y) and i (x, y) (i = 1, 2) depicts the amplitude and phase of the object wavefront, respectively, and r(x, y) and
(x, y) depict the amplitude and phase of the reference wavefront. The two object beams O1 and O2 and reference beam R
can be separately denoted as
 
1
O1 (x, y) = o1 (x, y) exp [i1 (x, y)] , (1)
0
314 P. Wang / Optik 131 (2017) 312316

Fig. 2. Multiple digital hologram and its Fourier spectra. (a) Multiple hologram with the inset representing a magnication of selected region in central
fringes, in which orthogonal fringes can be seen clearly. (b) Fourier spectra, in which the low and high frequency information parts have been selected,
respectively (real line circle: low spatial frequency part; dash line circle: high spatial frequency part).

 
0
O2 (x, y) = o2 (x, y) exp [i2 (x, y)] , (2)
1

and

1

2
R (x, y) = r (x, y) exp [i (x, y)] , (3)
1

2
where the Jones vectors dene that O1 (x, y) and O2 (x, y) have horizontal and vertical polarization states, respectively, and
R(x, y) has a 45 polarization angle relative to the vertical axis. As shown in Fig. 1, the on-axis beam O1 (x, y) carries low
frequency information of object while the off-axis beam O2 (x, y) carries high frequency information for the tilt illumination.
The three beams O1 (x, y), O2 (x, y) and R(x, y) interfere with each other on the CCD target. Therefore, the intensity of
digital hologram recorded by CCD can be expressed as

I (x, y) = |O1 (x, y) + O2 (x, y) + R (x, y) |2

(4)
= |O1 |2 + |O2 |2 + |R|2 + RO1 + RO2 + O1 R + O2 R ,

where the rst three terms correspond to the zero order of the diffraction. The fourth and fth terms form the two real images
produced by the two object beams while the last two terms form the two virtual images. By using angular multiplexing
method, the zero order and virtual images in Eq. (4) can be easily removed by spectral ltering in the Fourier transform
domain and the retained terms RO1 * and RO2 * can be numerical reconstructed by inverse Fresnel transform and Fresnel-
Fraunhofer diffraction integral, respectively. The complex wave eld reconstructed by the two sub-holograms is obtained
nally by superposing above two reconstructed parts.
Because existing angle between the two illumination object beams, this will lead to a corresponding phase slope between
the two reconstructed waveelds. If these two reconstructed waveelds are superposed directly, the complex reconstructed
image of the two sub-holograms will produce interference. So a phase correction parameter kt = exp[ik(xcos + ycos)] is
introduced to correct the phase slope. A resolution improved holographic image can be obtained by multipling the phase
correction parameter to one part and then superposing the two reconstructed parts.
In above experimental setup, high resolution imaging is achieved by recording two sub-holograms carrying the low and
high spatial frequency information of the samples in one frame. However, the interference crosstalk between two object
beams is introduced in reference [16] because of the two beams illumination. Incoherent beams in orthogonal polarization
states are used to build up two separate Mach-Zehnder interferometer to remove the interference crosstalk [18,19], and
this leads to that the experimental optical structure is very complex. Here a linearly polarized reference beam with a 45
polarized angle relative to the two object beams is introduced in our experiment to replace the two separate reference
beams. The polarization interference of the three different linearly polarized states beams makes the experimental setup
compact and simple.

3. Experimental results and discussions

Fig. 2(a) shows the multiple digital hologram recorded by CCD camera. The hologram consists of two off-axis sub-
holograms, which are the interference between two object beams O1 and O2 and reference beam R, appearing in form
of fringes with different carrier spatial frequencies. At the same time, considering the orthogonal polarization of O1 (x, y)
and O2 (x, y), there is no crosstalk between the two sub-holograms. The fringes of the two sub-hologram are in orthogonal
state because of the different incident angles of O1 (x, y) and O2 (x, y) as can be shown in the insertion of Fig. 2(a). This helps
each interference term locating at different positions in the Fourier spectra of the hologram, as shown in Fig. 2(b). The low
frequency information of object is in the real line circle and the high frequency information is in the dash line circle. It is
 P. Wang / Optik 131 (2017) 312316 315

Fig. 3. Reconstructed results. (a) Reconstructed image only with low frequency information of object. (b) reconstructed image with angular multiplexing
method and polarization interference; (c), (d) Magnied image of grating group 16 in (a) and (b); (e) Cross section of the reconstructed image along the
dashed line in (c) and (d).

therefore isolate each frequency component successfully by spectral ltering, numerically reconstruct them and combine
together to obtain the intensity and phase distribution of object wave.
Fig. 3(a) shows the reconstructed intensity image of the WT1005-62 resolution test target only with low frequency
information in which the real line circle in Fig. 2(b) is selected for reconstruction. The reconstructed gratings with low
resolution in upper part of the target are clear and resolved, but for high resolution gratings, such as group 16, its not
resolved. In the hologram recording process, only the low frequency information of the object reaches CCD target due to the
nite system numerical aperture and the limited CCD size. The optical system structure restricts its space-bandwidth product
and imaging ability. So the gratings with short periods and high spatial frequencies could not be effectively reconstructed
in the reconstruction process. For example, the magnied grating group 16 with a resolution of 59.5 lp/mm in Fig. 3(c) is
obviously blurred, which is the magnication of the selected region in Fig. 3(a), although the gratings from group 1 to group
10 are clear.
To overcome the limitation of nite numerical aperture, two beams can be used to illuminate the sample in different
directions. As is shown in Fig. 1, let object beams O1 (x, y) and O2 (x, y) illuminate the sample simultaneously in vertical and
tilted directions. When they reach to the CCD target, O1 (x, y) reserves low frequency information of the object while O2 (x, y)
keeps the high frequency information for its small incident angle. These two beams interfere with the reference wave R(x,
y) on CCD target to form two sub-holograms in a single frame, respectively. At the same time, the crosstalk between O1 (x, y)
and O2 (x, y) can be eliminated due to their orthogonal polarized states. This is equivalent to the synthetic aperture technique
only changing the direction of illumination instead of moving the CCD. As can be shown in Fig. 2(b), angular multiplexing
and orthogonal repartition of the interference patterns allows ltering separately the different spatial frequencies in the
Fourier domain of hologram. Once the interference terms have been ltered out, the reconstruction can be performed by
Fresnel-Kirchhoff diffraction integral using convolution method and the two complex amplitudes are mixed together to
form a high resolution reconstruction.
Fig. 3(b) shows the reconstructed results of the multiple digital hologram in Fig. 2(a). By using angular multiplexing
method with polarization interference, more grating groups with high resolution is distinguished in Fig. 3(b) than that in
Fig. 3(a). In comparison with Fig. 3(c), the magnied image of grating group 16 locating at the same place is shown in Fig. 3(d),
in which the fringes are very clear. Fig. 3(e) shows the cross sections of the image along the dashed lines in Figs. Fig. 3(c)
and Fig. 3(d). It can be clearly observed that, the edge of the grating fringes of group 16 in Fig. 3(d) is obviously sharper and
clearer and there is also an outstanding increased signal-noise ratio in comparison with Fig. 3(c). The experimental results
indicate that the resolution is increased for the synthetic holographic image reconstructed from multiple digital hologram
by the proposed approach.
316 P. Wang / Optik 131 (2017) 312316

4. Conclusions

In order to improve the resolution of digital holography, an improved angular multiplexing method is proposed with
polarization interference. Polarization interference and angular multiplexing technique, via the on-axis and off-axis illu-
mination, are used to carry the high frequency of spatial information. As successfully removing the unwanted interference
crosstalk and extracting the useful frequency spectrum spontaneously. Both theoretical analysis and experimental results
demonstrate the validity of this method for effectively improving the reconstruction resolution of a digital holographic
image.

Acknowledgments

This work is supported by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2016M600814) and the Key Science and
Technology Program of Shaanxi Province, China (Grant No. 2016JM6059).

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