Hybrid high speed pattern matching using a binary incoherent hologram generated by a rotational shearing interferometer

A hybrid image processing system for high speed pattern matching is presented. The system consists of an incoherent optical system and an electronic digital image processor. The optical system makes use of the matched filtering technique based on incoherent holography. The incoherent holograms of an input object and a reference object are binarized. This binarization of holograms has two major advantages: (1) it sharpens the autocorrelation peak, and (2) it makes real time processing possible. We demonstrate the high potential of this method by presenting computer simulations and experiments.