Systems (10, 11) and methods for optical Fourier processing and logic operations based on the photoinduced anisotropy of photochromic materials (12) such as bacteriorhodopsin, organic fulgides, azo and fluorescent dyes, phycobiliproteins, rhodopsin, and their analog, is dependent on the intensity of polarized actinic beam (28) that illuminates the material and the intensity profile of one or more input beams. This intensity dependence can be used to implement a simple, real-time, self-adaptive optical processing, i.e., spatial filtering, system for Fourier processing of optical input images (16'). This optical processing system can be used to process a wide variety of optical input images, from projected still images to live motion picture images.
OPTICAL FOURIER PROCESSING