Photographs compress images of three-dimensional objects into flat, two-dimensional images displayed by a piece of paper, and television and motion pictures also compress images of moving three-dimensional objects into flat, moving, two-dimensional images displayed on a screen. Photographs, television, and motion pictures are examples of media that display three-dimensional objects as simply intensity mappings. In other words, when an image of a scene is ordinarily reproduced in a photograph or motion picture, a viewer does not see an accurate reproduction of the light scattered from the object, but instead a viewer sees a point-by-point record of just the square of the electromagnetic radiation amplitude (i.e., the intensity) reflected from the object. For example, the light reflected off a photograph carries with it information about the intensity of the object displayed by the photograph but nothing about the electromagnetic wavefronts that were once scattered from the object during the taking of the photograph. As a result, a viewer only perceives a two-dimensional image of the object. However, when the electromagnetic wavefronts scattered from an object can be reconstructed for a viewer, the viewer sees wavefronts that are indistinguishable from the wavefronts scattered from the original object. Thus, the viewer is able to see a reformed three-dimensional image of the object, as if the object was actually before the viewer.
Holography is a method of recording and showing a still three-dimensional image of an object using a hologram and ideally monochromatic light from a laser. A conventional hologram is a still record of intensity and wavefronts scattered from an object with respect to an incident reference light that contains point-by-point information for reproducing a three-dimensional holographic image of the object, but is not an image of the object. The hologram is used to reconstruct a three-dimensional holographic image of the object in approximately the same position that the object was in when it was recorded. The holographic image changes as the position and orientation of the viewer changes. Thus, the holographic image of an object appears three three-dimensional to the viewer.
However, a hologram can only be used to produce a single still three-dimensional image of an object. The systems used to generate holograms and holographic images are bulky, and the time and number of steps performed to produce a single hologram make current holographic methods and systems impractical for producing three-dimensional motion pictures of objects. Thus, it is desirable to have holographic methods and compact holographic systems that enable the production of full three-dimensional motion pictures.