Image Correlators Using Optical Memory Disks

摘要

Optical correlation for pattern recognition has long been considered a promising application for optical processing. One of the reasons such correlators have not been used in practice is that in many practical applications a single filter is not sufficient to produce reliable recognition. A straightforward solution to this problem is the use of spatial and temporal multiplexing to search through a library of filters. The optical-disk correlator architectures that we describe in this Letter provide an extremely efficient method for performing such a search since they combine in a single device the large memory required for storage of the library of reference images, the spatial light modulator needed to represent the reference in the optical correlator, and the scanning mechanism to search temporally through the library. Reprints. (rh)