Holographic visualization: signal processing and technological challenges

3D visualization has received increased attention in recent years, significantly boosted by the advent of new AR/VR/XR display devices and the metaverse paradigm. However, current display solutions based on - for example - stereoscopic or light field representations still depict significant shortcomings regarding, e.g., supported viewing angle and eye accommodation. Using the holographic modality instead might bring a solution to the encountered problems. Though the term holography is often misused because of marketing reasons – the name is often linked with ideal 3D visualization solutions – real holography uses a wave-based light propagation model instead of the ray-based models used for regular 3D visualization systems.

Notwithstanding the big promises of holography and the evolution of the underlying supporting technologies, the challenges of bringing this technology to the professional and consumer markets are still huge.

This talk will focus on the challenges related to the generation, processing, coding, and quality assessment of holographic content in combination with the underlying computation, optoelectronic, optical and photonics hardware. In this context, also the status of JPEG Pleno, currently defining the first international standard for coding of holographic content, will be discussed.