Review of Holographic Printers for Computer-Generated Holograms

Two different types of holographic printers have been developed that can output holograms on photosensitive materials from digital data calculated as computer-generated holograms to display three-dimensional (3-D) images. The first one is the holographic fringe printer that can write a thin transmission hologram. The other one is the volume hologram printer to write a thick reflection hologram. These printers can output holograms that can provide all physiological depth cues the same as real objects. Therefore, reconstructed images are very natural and do not provide the accommodation-convergence conflict like other 3-D display systems, such as stereoscopic displays. This paper introduces basics of printers, improvements, and reconstructed images.