The state-of-the-art in computer generated holography for 3D display

Abstract

Holographic displays have the promise to be the ultimate 3D display technology, able to account for all visual cues. Recent advances in photonics and electronics gave rise to high-resolution holographic display prototypes, indicating that they may become widely available in the near future. One major challenge in driving those display systems is computational: computer generated holography (CGH) consists of numerically simulating diffraction, which is very computationally intensive. Our goal in this paper is to give a broad overview of the state-of-the-art in CGH. We make a classification of modern CGH algorithms, we describe different algorithmic CGH acceleration techniques, discuss the latest dedicated hardware solutions and indicate how to evaluate the perceptual quality of CGH. We summarize our findings, discuss remaining challenges and make projections on the future of CGH.