A method of calculating a sub-hologram of a virtual image point for an optical system includes determining an area delimited by straight line paths from the virtual image point to the perimeter of an entrance pupil of a viewer. The area includes a first area component on a first virtual replica of a display device and a second area component on a second virtual replica of the display device. The method also includes determining a first sub-hologram component of the virtual image point within the first area component and a second sub-hologram component of the virtual image point within the second area component. The method additionally includes superimposing the first sub-hologram component and second sub-hologram component to form a sub-hologram of the virtual image point. The method further includes applying a local phase-ramp function to at least one of the first area component and second area component.

A projection system arranged to receive an image for projection. The image is a colour image comprising a first colour component and a second colour component. The system is arranged to calculate a first hologram of the first colour component and a second hologram of the second colour component. The system is further arranged to add content of the second colour component to the first colour component before calculating the first hologram. The first hologram contains information of the first colour component and information of at least a portion of the second colour component. The system is further arranged to form a first holographic reconstruction by illuminating the first hologram with first colour light and to form a second holographic reconstruction by illuminating the second hologram with second colour light. The first holographic reconstruction changes the chromaticity of the at least a portion of the second colour component.

There is provided a method of projection using an optical element (502,602) having spatially variant optical power. The method comprises combining Fourier domain data representative of a 2D image with Fourier domain data having a first lensing effect (604a) to produce first holographic data. Light is spatially modulated (504,603a) with the first holographic data to form a first spatially modulated light beam. The first spatially modulated light beam is redirected using the optical element (502,602) by illuminating a first region (607) of the optical element (602) with the first spatially modulated beam. The first lensing effect (604a) compensates for the optical power of the optical element in the first region (607). Advantageous embodiments relate to a head-up display for a vehicle using the vehicle windscreen (502,602) as an optical element to redirect light to the viewer (505,609).

A holographic display apparatus includes a backlight unit having a light source configured to emit coherent light, a spatial light modulator configured to diffract incident light from the backlight unit and generate a holographic image, a beam deflector configured to change a traveling direction of the incident light from the backlight unit to change a focal position of the holographic image, an eye-tracking sensor configured to recognize positions of a viewer's eyeballs, and a controller configured to perform, in real time, calibration of the eye-tracking sensor and the beam deflector to focus the holographic image on the recognized positions of the viewer's eyeballs.

There is provided a method of projection using an optical element having spatially variant optical power. The method comprises combining Fourier domain data representative of a 2D image with Fourier domain data having a first lensing effect to produce first holographic data. Light is spatially modulated with the first holographic data to form a first spatially modulated light beam. The first spatially modulated light beam is redirected using the optical element by illuminating a first region of the optical element with the first spatially modulated beam. The first lensing effect compensates for the optical power of the optical element in the first region.

A method for processing a sequence of holographic images with a view to playing the images back on a holographic display device to at least one viewer. A subset of wavelet coefficients relevant for the reconstruction of a sub-hologram visible for the at least one viewer from at least one viewing point is selected from a decomposition of at least one holographic image on a wavelet basis and information representative of a location of the at least one viewer in a repository of the display device. In the method, decomposition of the at least one holographic image is carried out on a Shannon wavelet basis.

A method for generating video holograms in real time for a holographic playback device comprising at least one light modulator means, into which a scene divided into object points is encoded as an entire hologram and can be seen as a reconstruction from a visibility region, which is located within a periodicity interval of the reconstruction of the video hologram, the visibility region defining a subhologram together with each object point of the scene to be reconstructed, and the entire hologram being generated from a superposition of contributions of subholograms, is characterized in that for each object point the contributions of the subholograms in the entire reconstruction of the scene can be determined from at least one look-up table.

Disclosed is a holographic display including a spatial light modulator (SLM) with pixels, the SLM pixels being on a substrate, the SLM including circuitry which is on the same substrate as the SLM pixels, the circuitry operable to perform calculations which provide an encoding of the SLM.

A method of obtaining a focus term by using a periodicity of the focus term is provided. The focus term may be used in a plurality of operation processes for processing image data.

Disclosed is a holographic display including a spatial light modulator (SLM) with pixels, the SLM pixels being on a substrate, the SLM including circuitry which is on the same substrate as the SLM pixels, the circuitry operable to perform calculations which provide an encoding of the SLM.