Optical Image Recognition System Implemented with a 3-D Memory Disk

Holographic storage of data in 3-D media can provide high density of information storage and parallel access to the stored information. Such memories were investigated extensively in the early 60’s [1,2,3,4,5] and even though these early efforts produced remarkable results they never found practical application largely because of material limitations such as low sensitivity, fanning, and hologram decay. Interest in holographic 3-D memories has been revitalized in recent years for a variety of reasons, the most significant probably being the emergence of applications, such as neural networks, machine vision, and databases, that can make use of the capabilities of holographic 3-D memories.