Combined nonuniform quantization and lossless coding of digital holograms of three-dimensional objects

Digital holograms are capable of encoding three-dimensional (3D) information of a scene or object. Uniform quantization has been used in the past to compress digital holograms with some success. We have developed nonuniform quantization techniques that operate on the complex-valued hologram data for increased performance. Our digital holograms of 3D objects are captured using phase-shift digital interferometry. The quantized holographic pixels are coded using lossless techniques to achieve compression rates in excess of 40.