Synthesis of computer-generated spherical hologram of real object with 360° field of view using a depth camera

A method for synthesizing a 360° computer-generated spherical hologram of real-existing objects is proposed. The whole three-dimensional (3-D) information of a real object is extracted by using a depth camera to capture multiple sides of the object. The point cloud sets which are obtained from corresponding sides of the object surface are brought into a common coordinate system by point cloud registration process. The modeled 3-D point cloud is then processed by hidden point removal method in order to identify visible point set for each spherical hologram point. The hologram on the spherical surface is finally synthesized by accumulating spherical waves from visible object points. By reconstructing partial region of the calculated spherical hologram, the corresponding view of the 3-D real object is obtained. The principle is verified via optical capturing using a depth camera and numerical reconstructions.