HN VOL 35 2021

When it Comes to Science, South Korea Reaps What it Sows

Scientific research is expensive and often messy, on occasions taking the research into uncharted territories but always contributing to scientific knowledge. Two recent success stories from South Korea in the field of holographic displays illustrate the need for long term planning.

According to OECD data, in 2018 South Korea spent over £74 billion on R&D, maintaining its position as the fifth largest R&D investor in the world after the United States, China, Japan and Germany. The Korean Government has set a target to increase the R&D investment to reach 5%.

In 2020, the total government R&D budget was planned to be £15.73 billion, which is more than a 17% increase from the 2019 budget.

Conglomerates

The majority of Korean R&D is conducted by the industrial sector (76.23%, 2017) and carried out within the ‘chaebol’ or the large family-controlled international conglomerates that dominate the Korean economy.

As part of efforts to find wider uses for holograms, researchers from the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), one of the country’s chaebols, began to study the development of holographic displays. After eight years of trials, the team has published a paper on slimpanel holographic video displays (see HN November 2020), which claims to overcome many of the problems that have prevented the commercialisation of holographic systems which were first demonstrated at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) back in 1990.

Size matters

Existing holographic video devices are limited by the size of their components, both in terms of the physical space required as well as data size. This resulted in either a very narrow viewing angle on a larger display or a larger angle on a miniscule display. The size drawback of video holographic devices was the bulky lens that was required to gather any scattered light from the display’s pixels in order to project a quality image.

IHMA Highlights Role of Holograms in Battle Against ID Fraud

Holography is at the heart of new document and ID security and authentication, says Dr Paul Dunn, Chairman of the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA).

Fraudulent passports, driver’s licences and fake documents cost governments, issuing agencies and other global organisations billions of dollars a year in lost revenue. Corporate reputations may also suffer, and investment stifled, as funds are diverted to cover losses, while the cost of paying for anti-counterfeiting measures to bring criminals to justice can run into hundreds of millions of dollars.

But in the fight against counterfeiting and fraud, holography, propelled by advances in materials and applications, is valued, particularly in securing data and thwarting criminal interference, tampering, alteration, forgery or imitation – new technology, innovation and advanced processes ensure protection against the forgery of variable information, most notably photographs and personal data.

Overt technology such as holograms offer a means of protection and authentication, and a warning about the dangers of counterfeiting. Indeed, in the wake of the COVD pandemic, the threat has significantly increased and countries around the world are looking at ways to tackle the problem and secure documents better.

New Anticounterfeiting and Diversion Service Combines QR Codes with Holograms

Toppan – a provider of communication, security, packaging, décor materials, and electronics solutions – will provide a security solution to global construction machinery company Hitachi Construction Machinery for labels on the packages of their aftermarket parts.

Outside of the construction and transportation machinery sectors, Toppan is expanding the use of ID-NEX and related security solutions in such sectors as fastmoving consumer goods and cosmetics. The ID-NEX authentication and traceability service provides cloud-based, end-toend management of product life cycles to support brand protection, digital warranties and campaign entries.

Toppan offers a wide range of media and methods, including security holograms as well as high-security RFID tags, versatile QR codes, and bar codes for assigning unique IDs. Provision via the cloud reduces initial costs and the lead time for adoption of the service by eliminating the need for development of individual applications and systems.

Visual confirmation of authenticity

Service Update

The solution, planned for launch in January 2021, will combine Toppan’s anticounterfeit holograms with its ID-NEX® service, which facilitates authentication and traceability through the use of QR codes that can be scanned with smartphones. Counterfeiting and grey market diversion are causes for concern for many industries and lead to significant damage and loss, while the quality of the majority of counterfeit products is vastly inferior to that of authentic goods. In the construction and transportation machinery sectors, this is a particular problem since defects or failures during operation can result in serious and potentially life-threatening accidents.

Hitachi Construction Machinery is therefore adopting Toppan’s ID-NEX authentication and traceability service to address the issue and ensure robust product management throughout the distribution process.

Advantages offered by Toppan’s solution include an extensive track record in effectively combating imitation goods and illicit distribution; the ease of authentication with a smartphone; and the reduction in costs made possible by a cloud-based service. In addition, holograms enable verification of authenticity with the naked eye and help prevent label counterfeiting.

Holograms can be applied to product number labels to enable visual confirmation of authenticity. Toppan makes this possible with S-White®, a hologram whose black and white parts reverse when the viewing angle is rotated through 90 degrees, and a demetallisation process for creating fine patterns by using etching to partially remove metal sections of holograms. Thermal transfer onto labels for parts also helps to prevent fraudulent activity by making holograms difficult to remove or reuse.

‘Using Toppan’s ID-NEX authentication and traceability service will enable our customers throughout the world to confirm the authenticity of the parts we supply and use them with greater reassurance and peace of mind. We also aim to leverage enhanced traceability and distribution efficiency for parts to further expand value chain business in the future,’ said Kenji Iitsuka, General Manager, Parts Planning Department, Spare Parts Division, Life Cycle Support Group at Hitachi Construction Machinery.

Cloud-based service

‘Toppan’s DX Design Division launched in April last year,’ said Masanobu Koyama, Senior General Manager of Business Development in the Security Business Center of Toppan’s DX Design Division. ‘We are delighted that Hitachi Construction Machinery has chosen ID-NEX, a cloudbased ID authentication service that is central to our DX business, and we are confident that we can provide high addedvalue for our customers’ products.’

IHMA Highlights Role of Holograms

In South Africa, for instance, the government is currently considering adopting biometric technology in order to stem the rising tide of identity fraud, which recently caused losses in excess of one billion rand (more than US$60 million).

Governments and other issuers of ID cards, passports and driving licences must protect an increasing array of documents from wide ranging attacks, implementing more security technologies.

Increasingly, governments are turning to polycarbonate as their material of choice to deliver the most secure, durable and climate-resistant identity cards. Holography is meeting these needs as demonstrated by OpSec Security’s recent launch of Fuse, a high-performance hologram applied in register, and by IQ Structures, another manufacturer of holograms, bringing forward a polycarbonate film solution with edge-to-edge holographic patterns. These innovations can help to ‘robustly’ combat the most frequent counterfeiting attacks. They also protect documents from so called ‘chain attacks’ – criminals who counterfeit a weaker document such as a driving licence before going on to attempt to fake a passport later.

Holograms are also playing their part in the fight against fake academic documents as fraud of education certificates and diplomas becomes ever more sophisticated (and on the rise) – affecting students, employers and universities. According to a UK National Qualification Agency survey, only one in four university admission staff feel confident spotting fake documents.

So most academic institutions will produce certificates and diplomas that combine security print techniques with physical devices, most often a hologram. Physical anti-counterfeiting features can reduce the risk of tampering and interference, while digital solutions help in intelligence and identifying conspirators working within the system.

‘We are seeing a new generation of high security, very innovative holograms becoming available, which are raising levels of ID document security and protection, providing the latest effective tools to help those with responsibility for law enforcement to keep up with criminals’, says Dr Dunn.

‘The new Photonics HoloSystem is an example of how the technology is being developed to make forged documents easier to spot, he continues. ‘The developers behind the project believe it will allow for the numbering and personalisation of individual holograms, even where they are rapidly created, stopping criminals from being able to overcome them for years to come’.

Growth

The continued growth in the use of holography as a security device points to the technology’s deep underlying versatility, cost effectiveness and graphical flexibility. Indeed, holography will continue to flourish in those markets where a premium overt security feature is required.

For example, with a passport, the top target for counterfeiters is the bio data information. Sector manufacturers such as De Le Rue are working with state and commercial security printers and providers to protect this information using secure ID components, which include the addition of holographic laminates to help to protect the risk of alterations to the genuine holder’s details.

An advanced holographic thin-film laminate from Demax Holograms offers bespoke construction for enhanced security and design to protect paper passport data pages against alteration, replication and simulation including laminate removal and reuse. Custom-shaped characters can be produced anywhere within the laminate, opening the opportunity for their integration with printed features.

They can also facilitate fast and convenient authentication. While nothing is immune from the threat of counterfeiting, colleges and universities are fast becoming aware that holograms and other anti-counterfeit technologies can make illegal copying or reproduction difficult and provide a means to verify legitimate credentials.

Important part

Fully tested for chemical and mechanical resistance, the laminate provides strong adhesion to the substrate and will disintegrate under any form of attack, making its reuse impossible. With the added benefit of custom-shaped edges, the fraudulent use of a second laminate on top will become immediately obvious. The technology, which offers an array of nakedeye features that go beyond conventional diffractive OVDs (optically variable devices), also provides high counterfeit resilience, as the effects cannot be reproduced or imitated using alternative techniques.

While holography faces challenges as ID technology and associated criminal behaviour continue to evolve, the evidence shows that its ability to find new applications ensure that it remains a potent anti-counterfeiting measure. Holograms will continue to play an important part in moving overt protection to the next stage of development, ensuring quality and checking the trade in ID counterfeiting while those documents not displaying security holograms are seized and destroyed. Moreover, the use of well-designed and properly deployed authentication solutions, as advocated by the ISO 12931 standard, enables those with ID protection responsibilities to verify the authenticity of a legitimate product, differentiating it from counterfeits. Even those that carry a ‘fake’ authentication feature can be distinguished from the genuine item if that item carries a carefully thought-out authentication solution. The advantages holography offers will continue even as digital and mobile ID technologies gain increasing levels of traction.

The IHMA (www.ihma.org) is made up of over 80 of the world's leading hologram companies. Members include the leading producers and converters of holograms for banknote security, anti-counterfeiting, brand protection, packaging, graphics and other commercial applications around the world, and actively cooperate to maintain the highest professional, security and quality standards.

Dr Paul Dunn.

“We are seeing a new generation of high security, very innovative holograms becoming available, which are raising levels of ID document security and protection…”

News in Brief

Apple Granted Patent for Holographic Head-upDisplay

The US Patent and Trademark Office has granted Apple a US patent 10,866,414 (15 December 2020) relating to a vehicle's Head-up-Display (HUD) that could be used on the passenger side of the windshield as well as the vehicle’s side windows using a holographic optical element.

In conventional HUDs, a virtual image is created using a display in a dashboard to project light onto the front windshield of the vehicle at a given angle of incidence, which then reflects the light to the driver's eyes at an angle of reflection that matches the angle of incidence. The patent claims that traditional HUDs of this type can place undesirable restrictions on the location of the display in the vehicle. For example, a conventional HUD may be incompatible with the side window of a vehicle because light reflected off the side window from a display mounted within the structure of the vehicle does not reach the user's eyes.

Apple's invention covers a HUD that may include a display unit that produces the display output and an optical combiner on a vehicle window that directs the display output towards the viewer. The optical combiner may be a holographic or diffractive optical element or may be an array of angled reflectors such as micromirrors embedded in an indexmatching material.

Optical combiners formed from holographic elements may be configured to reflect light at an angle of reflection that, if desired, can be different to the angle of incidence, allowing light to reach a viewer's eyes even when the head-up display reflects light off a side window in the vehicle.

David Attenborough Hologram to Front Tour Guide Phone App

British broadcaster, presenter and natural historian Sir David Attenborough is to front a new app that will allow mobile phone users to enlist the presenter as a virtual tour guide who will appear in holographic videos when they visit sights across the UK.

The 94-year-old will be the centrepiece of a new augmented reality app, which will be released alongside the BBC’s (British Broadcasting Corporation) next landmark natural history TV series, The Green Planet, which launches next year. It will feature digitally streamed plants and creatures in real-world sights when visitors use their mobile phones.

The app is in the early stages of development but will likely work in a similar way to the popular mobile game Pokemon Go, with digital aspects being overlaid over images of the real world captured through the smartphone's camera. Its makers are in discussions about trialling it with consumers in unnamed locations before a larger scale launch next year.

The app, which is being developed by a consortium including the mobile phone operator EE, BBC Studios, the commercial arm of the BBC, and Kew’s Royal Botanic Gardens, is one of nine test projects to receive government-funding as part of an initiative to showcase how next-generation 5G mobile technology can benefit society.

The Green Planet augmented reality app has been awarded £2.27 million in funding by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, as part of its 5G Create initiative, contributing to a total project cost of £4.4 million.

Researchers Develop 3D-Printed Microlenses with Adjustable Refractive Indices

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA have developed new 3D-printed microlenses with adjustable refractive indices.

The study was led by Paul Braun and Lynford Goddard and is the first to demonstrate the ability to adjust the direction in which light bends and travels through a lens with submicrometer precision. The results of their study are published in ‘Light: Science and Application’.

‘Having the ability to fabricate optics with different shapes and optical parameters offers a solution to common problems faced in optics,’ said Braun, who is a professor of materials science and engineering.

As a demonstration, the team fabricated three lenses: a flat lens; the world’s first visible-light Luneburg lens – a previously impossible-to-fabricate spherical lens with unique focusing properties; and 3D waveguides that may enable massive datarouting capabilities.

‘A standard lens has a single refractive index and therefore only one pathway that light can travel through the lens,’ said Goddard, who is a professor of electrical and computer engineering. ‘By having control over the internal refractive index and the shape of the lens during fabrication, we have two independent ways to bend light inside a single lens.’

‘In the lab, the team uses a process called direct-laser writing to create the lenses. A laser solidifies liquid polymers and forms small geometric optical structures about 1μm in diameter. Direct-laser writing has been used in the past to create other microlenses that only had one refractive index, the researchers said.

‘We addressed the refractive index limitations by printing inside of a nanoporous scaffolding support material,’ said Braun. ‘The scaffold locks the printed micro-optics into place, allowing for the fabrication of a 3D system with suspended components.’

Team members said they expect that their method will significantly impact the manufacturing of complex optical components and imaging systems and will be useful in advancing personal computing.

3D Imaging Illuminates Internal Structure of Brain Spheroids

Researchers at the Wyss Center in Geneva and collaborators have developed novel imaging and labelling techniques to view the internal structure of brain spheroids and observe the morphology of single neurons in 3D.

Brain spheroids, which the researchers term ‘mini brains,’ are a cluster of different types of brain cells and are cultured from induced pluripotent stem cells. Used as a research tool, including in drug development, the mini brains will be more useful to researchers if their structure can be accurately assessed without having to cut them into slices for microscopy.

‘Despite advances in growing ‘mini-brains’, it has been difficult to understand in detail what is going on inside – until now,’ said Professor Adrien Roux, a researcher involved in the study.

‘Typically, to look inside a ‘mini-brain’, we slice it thinly and view it on a slide under a microscope,’ said Dr Subashika Govindan, another researcher involved in the study.

‘This is a slow process that can damage the sample. Now, for the first time, we have produced high resolution 3D images of single neurons within intact ‘mini-brains’, revealing their remarkable complexity.’

To address this, these researchers have developed an array of imaging techniques to allow them to peer inside the intact spheroids. These involve a method to make the spheroids completely transparent, so that imaging can take place. The researchers also used viral vectors to label specific neurons, allowing them to create striking 3D images of individual neurons within the spheroids.

Holograms that Make Smartphones Smarter

In the same way that the invention of the laser in the early 1960s paved the way for recording and viewing holograms, so the new generation of smartphones, along with the advent of faster 5G networks, is making ‘heightened reality’ images a commercial reality.

As a first step towards holographic video calls, the device supports Azure Kinect, Intel RealSense and iPhone cameras for recording 3D video messages to share with other Portrait users.

Turning content into 3D images

Another company looking to raise finance for its 3D imaging technology is San Diegobased company, IKIN. During this year’s online CES (11-14 January 2020), IKIN met with potential sellers and investors about its in-development smartphone accessory that turns content on the device into realistic 3D images.

South Korea Reaps What it Sows

To reduce the lens size, the research team used a geometric phase lens, thus saving space and reducing the display to a centimetre of thickness.

The new slim-panel holographic video display uses a steeringbacklight unit and a holographic video processor to address those issues.

Outside of the chaebol network, the remainder of science research is funded by the government, with research performed by national research institutes and universities.

At the end of 2019, the Looking Glass Factory launched a 32-inch, 8K-resolution 3D light-field display for retail, medical imaging and entertainment. Now, it has announced the launch of a personal 3D image display called the Portrait.

The company is currently raising funds on crowdsourcing platform Kickstarter to help develop Looking Glass Portrait for artists, designers, developers, filmmakers, photographers, and anyone who wants to explore 3D capture and creation. The company says that users can get started with just a computer and a smartphone, and no programming knowledge is needed.

The device features a 7.9-inch light-field display with 2,048 x 1,536 resolution and 4:3 aspect ratio – though given the fact that it appears to have image depth, the company prefers to think of the aspect ratio as 4:3:2. It's reported to use proprietary optics that can make the images onscreen appear to float out of the device, and technology has been included to reduce the effects of ambient light to enhance the quality of the visuals.

It can generate up to 100 different perspectives of a 3D image, making it possible to be viewed simultaneously by a number of people gathered around the display, with each getting a unique stereoscopic view of the 3D image onscreen. All without needing to wear special glasses, headsets or employ eye-tracking technology.

Although the device can be connected to a PC or Mac to run more demanding 3D content, it has its own onboard Raspberry Pi computer and software that enables it to run recorded 3D images at 60 frames per second.

IKIN's accessory is an attachment with a specialised proprietary chemical polymer lens that is designed to fit the smartphone's dimensions. The lens creates 3D images that are viewable in daylight on Android or iOS smartphones.

Prize winning technology

IKIN will create 3D content itself – it has already developed games along with other technical demonstrations – but the expectation is that developers of smartphone apps will license the technology. Consumers will buy the accessory that will allow them to view the 3D images without wearing headgear or goggles.

The company is targeting a smartphone accessory consumer launch for later this year. The product – RYZ– has onboard artificial intelligence that customises the experience for each user, and the environment it's used in, so that if you tend to use a device a certain way, for instance if you are right or left-handed, it optimises the 3D image to look best for you.

The company is already developing bigger applications with larger 3D imaging. IKIN, which has raised more than $13 million to date, is seeking partnerships to raise at least another $10 million.

Toward the end of 2020, a hologram technology ETRI developed by South Korean researchers won the top prize at one of the world's most renowned conferences on display technologies. ETRI – the government-funded Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute in Daedeok Innopolis in Daejeon – announced that it had won the top prize at Display Week 2020, an annual event hosted by the Society for Information Display (SID). At the event, ETRI introduced its 1μm pixel pitch Spatial Light Modulator (SLM) panel and 360° tabletop holographic display system.

The use of such a high resolution SLM allows the phase and intensity of the light to be controlled and so allowing hologram images to be displayed without resorting to visual aids.

Larger and colour display

Currently, ETRI is developing a larger panel than what was exhibited in the SID, with the target of producing a 3.1-inch spatial light modulator with 230 million pixels. ETRI announced that it is also working on a colour SLM panel, by which full colour hologram images can be reproduced with just one panel instead of using three.

Both these case studies demonstrate that the commitment shown by government, industry and research institutes to prioritise the budget for science will pay dividends in the long run – even if you can’t always predict where the research will take you.

IHMA Website Gets Makeover

A New Year brings a new look to the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA) website. Whilst the old site was perfectly functional, there were some voices of concern that the layout and presentation of the webpages didn’t reflect the innovation and pace of change going on within the holography industry.

The prismatic dynamic colours on the banner of the new homepage and the clean lines of the text formatting set the tone for what is a simple to navigate and easy on the eye piece of web design. But this is not to detract from the rich content with sections on setting out the role of the association and the benefits of membership.

At the heart of the site, reflecting what many in the industry consider the ‘Crown Jewels’ of the association, is a complete exploration of the Hologram Image Register (HIR) which is a secure registry of holographic images, established by the IHMA to safeguard hologram copyright and underpin the use of holograms in authentication and security printing. The description of the HIR makes the point that to comply with ISO’s new 14298 standard (which covers management of security print and security foil production), hologram producers must register all security holograms they produce in a global registry, which is the purpose of the IHMA’s HIR.

In all, the new site seems to give a clean and modern look to the industry with a wealth of useful resources for members and customers alike, but you can judge for yourself by visiting www.ihma.org

Managing Holography Errors in Asphere Metrology

Forming and superposing wavefronts for optical metrology is an oftenoverlooked capability of holography. But in an article adapted from Photonics Media, Janet Lim from Edmund Optics Singapore explores how computergenerated holography is a quick method for measuring aspherical lenses in a production environment, but that care is required to minimise errors.

Aspheric lenses (aspherics) are formed from surfaces that are not sections of a sphere or cylinder. They are used for eyeglasses, giving crisper vision than standard lenses, when looking in directions other than the lens’ optical center.

Aspherics are preferred over conventional spherical lenses in many optical systems for their high optical performance and lightweight and compact form factor. However, measuring aspheric surfaces is not a straightforward process.

Metrology options are typically based on interferometry or profilometry. To measure an asphere interferometrically, the reference wavefront must match that of the nominal aspheric form. A computer-generated hologram (CGH) aspheric null achieves this by converting the wavefront from the aspheric surface into a spherical wavefront and superimposing it over the reference wave in the interferometer.

The accuracy and validity of the hologram measurement is affected by errors stemming from the design, fabrication, and alignment of the substrate. Users cannot eliminate errors (if any) that emerge from design or fabrication; however, they can correct for small errors caused by misalignment.

Measurement steps

The measurement process starts with the installation of a CGH at a location specified by the manufacturer or designer, somewhere between the transmission sphere and the sphere’s cat’s-eye focus –the location where the interferometer beam meets a point on the spherical surface. The hologram position will need to be slightly adjusted to remove any tilt and power fringes from the alignment interferogram.

What are CGHs?

CGHs are substrates etched with a pattern that provides accurate wavefront control. The underlying mechanism is based on the theory of diffraction, in which waves passing through an aperture are bent according to the

Upon completion of hologram alignment, the lens is moved to a position where the rays are perpendicular to the test surface. This position – the working distance – is also provided by the CGH manufacturer or designer. Once positioned at the correct working distance, the test surface will need a slight adjustment to achieve an interferogram with the least spatial aberration.

Alignment of the test surface is one of the most challenging steps in hologram measurement. Differentiating alignment error from real residual error on the test surface is often difficult. Lateral misalignment typically leads to tilt, coma, and trefoil, while longitudinal misalignment leads to power and spherical aberration.

Lateral misalignment is reduced by keeping the dominant alignment error, or coma, to its minimum. Coma is a non-rotationally symmetric error often caused by an offcentered lens and is unlikely to appear as a significant residual error on the surface. Hence, minimal coma is a good benchmark of lateral alignment.

The dominant longitudinal alignment errors are power and spherical aberration. Defocusing the test surface can diminish the residual power and spherical aberration. However, this implies that the measurement no longer occurs at the working distance.

Janet concludes by asserting that CGH interferometry is a fast and accurate metrology technique for high-volume aspheric lens production. Errors can emerge from design, fabrication, and alignment, though lens manufacturers can minimize the impact of errors by ensuring accurate alignment during the measurement process – preferably without introducing additional steps that might compromise efficiency.

Longitudinal misalignment can induce significant third-order spherical aberration, which manifests in a linear relationship that can be correlated via design software or by empirically measuring the test surface. By compensating for error on a longitudinally misaligned aspheric surface, it is possible to achieve an ideal alignment.

density of the periodic pattern. A CGH pattern is designed parametrically so that light passing through the hologram perpendicularly hits the surface under test. Each hologram design is unique to an aspheric prescription and complements a predetermined transmission sphere.

Smartphones Make Smarter Holograms

The tantalising prospect of combining the analytical capability and connectivity of a smartphone with the authenticating power of a hologram was the theme for the ‘Physical, Digital, Virtual’ session of The Holography Conference Online (8-9 December 2020). Here is a selection of the presentations.

Pete Smallwood, from Eltronis, illustrated the power of combining smartphone authentication with new holographic origination features in his paper ‘Physical and Digital – Combining the Best of Both Worlds for Robust Authentication’.

Pete explained how strong levelone features have been used in the pharmaceutical industry in Russia to allow practitioner authentication and regain confidence in prescribing medical pharmaceuticals. And in what is likely to be an increasingly important application in the mass COVID-19 vaccination programmes being rolled out across the globe, Pete described how in one application, vials containing a solution for an intramuscular injection are being protected using a bespoke hologram/smartphone solution.

Pete also explained how the combination of a hologram with a QR code, which is scanned using a standard smartphone, is being used on Romanian wine bottles to provide information about the wine’s pedigree and confirm it is genuine (see HN October 2020).

Jan Thiele, from Prismade Labs, carried on the theme of using technology to make holograms smarter in his paper ‘Smart Holograms – Electronic Holograms for Smartphone-based Verification’.

In his presentation, Jan set out the path to alleviating the reliance on the end-user’s knowledge of the hologram features by explaining how using touch can allow the hologram to be verified on a smartphone. And as Jan explained, an additional benefit to the system is that it can be activated when connection to the internet isn’t possible.

The session concluded with Brett Nelson’s (De La Rue Authentication) presentation of his paper entitled ‘Digital Authentication Using Photopolymer Holograms’.

After setting out the four levels of inspection that apply to security features, Brett argued that holograms are still the most widely recognised and intuitive Level 1 authentication element. But as advances in the sophistication of counterfeits drive the need for ever more complex holographic features and elements, so the demand for machine assisted verification has increased.

Brett explained the 7-dimensions of parallax-based authentication that an inspection of a Lippman hologram must satisfy to pass the test of authenticity, and claimed that digital validation of full parallax photopolymer holograms offers additional benefits compared to classical holography. As became clear in the session, and elsewhere in the conference programme, the interplay between holograms and digital devices has gone beyond simple authentication, and the combination of the two technologies opens up security applications that neither can achieve on their own.

WiMi Hologram Cloud in the News

WiMi Hologram Cloud Inc, a holographic augmented reality (AR) provider in China, announced that it has obtained the China Compulsory Certification (the ‘CCC’) for its hologram soft light cinema headset. According to the certification documents, which include the electromagnetic compatibility test report, safety test report, and CCC product test report, the company's model WMH0D3 portable media player has passed all tests and successfully obtained CCC.

To obtain the CCC, products must comply with Chinese national standards and related technical specifications. Before they can be produced, imported, and sold for public use, products listed in the CCC product catalogue must undergo mandatory tests and audits in accordance with compulsory product certification procedures, obtain relevant certifications, and display these certifications on the product package.

To better address customer demands, WiMi released the hologram soft light cinema headset.

The headset has recently been enhanced in regards to its image colour management, device connection, and wearing experience. In terms of image colour management, the headset can now offer more transparent colours with higher picture quality by leveraging its powerful image processing engine in cooperation with consumer and professional electronics giant, SONY. In addition, customers can also connect headsets with drones and professional cameras. The headset's use of farfocus imaging technology optimises the customer’s wearing experience by relieving any eye fatigue caused by long-term, shortdistance image viewing.

WiMi, whose commercial operations began in 2015, operates an integrated holographic AR application platform in China and has built a comprehensive and diversified holographic AR content library in China. Its extensive portfolio includes 4,654 pieces of AR holographic contents.

Shares skyrocket

In a separate development, shares in WiMi have skyrocketed recently, after the company announced newly patented laser technology with applications in driverless cars, medical imaging and electric vehicles. With the rapid development of the electric vehicle industry, it is expected that pulse laser holography applications will play an increasingly important role in the collection and presentation of holographic data. For example, during the autonomous driving of electric vehicles, the distance between the focusing lens and laser must be adjusted quickly and accurately. When the car is in motion, objects in the scene surrounding the car are constantly changing. According to the patent, WiMi's device evaluates the differences in reflected light from the surrounding objects and is able to display clear holographic images of different sized objects at varying distances from the car.

META Gets Better with Tunable Laser

Efficient holographic recordings are reliant on stable and wavelength specific light sources, so when photonics company HÜBNER were asked to create a tunable laser for holographic recordings, it was a challenge they couldn’t resist.

As the name suggests, Canada based Metamaterial Inc (META) designs and manufactures metamaterials that can manipulate and utilise light (and other forms of energy) in ways that cannot be achieved by naturally occurring structures.

One of META’s product lines, metaOPTIX, is a range of holographic optical components that are recorded with laser light onto a light-sensitive photopolymer material to form Volume Holographic Gratings (VHGs).

One example is META’s laser filtering product, which is a multi-layer holographic notch filter that is spectrally selective (only reflects a narrow band of wavelengths) and highly efficient (peak optical densities greater than an OD of 5 – equivalent to a transmittance of 0.01%). The result is a laser protection filter that blocks the threat wavelengths without noticeably distorting the colour and visibility of the viewer’s world.

META’s holographic system makes recordings across the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum, but the green region is a particularly important range of wavelengths. However, up to now, they lacked wavelength flexibility within that band. Which is why the company was so pleased to announce that it has installed the world’s first C-WAVE (continuous wave) GTR/NIR (green-to-red/near-infrared) tunable laser from HÜBNER Photonics. The new system covers a significant gap in the green region, which would be costly and complex to address with alternative narrow bandwidth lasers.

Together with two other tunable sources, META now has the ability to record holograms at any desired wavelength across the entire visible spectrum. This new, full-spectrum capability will enable the production of full-colour RGB holograms for optical combiners in augmented reality and head up display applications.

‘HÜBNER Photonics developed and delivered a first-of-a-kind tunable laser system, the C-WAVE GTR/NIR. We could not be happier with HÜBNER Photonics’ support, which enabled us to quickly install and commission the GTR 100% remotely, overcoming the travel restrictions related to COVID-19,’ said George Palikaras, President and CEO at META.

Precise control of the recording wavelength is critical in holographic product development. Designers must compensate for wavelength shifts that result from material shrinkage and effects of post processing, which cause the replay wavelength to differ from the wavelength used for recording. The new laser is fully tunable across the visible GTR region (500 to 750 nm), as well as NIR (1000 to 1500 nm).

‘With the C-WAVE GTR/NIR, META is now able to record RGB (red, green, blue) holograms at any combination of wavelengths our customers may require. We expect this capability to help us attract and more rapidly complete new holographic development projects,” said Dr Andrew Mark, Manager of Optical Engineering and Metamaterial Design at META.

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Demax Unveils E-LIDOGRAM PC Inlay

Bulgarian company Demax Holograms has unveiled a new solution for the protection of polycarbonate documents including national ID cards, driving licences and passport datapages.

Branded as E-LIDOGRAM® PC Inlay, it is designed to provide enhanced security of government-issued documents along with maximum DOVID design freedom.

Polycarbonate has long established itself as the preferred material for national ID cards and passport datapages, with suppliers now offering an extensive range of polycarbonatebased features to meet the ever-increasing demand to provide easy authentication of documents whilst making the document itself more secure and difficult to alter.

Superior to other plastics and composite materials, polycarbonate boasts unique optical and physical properties says Demax. Its high temperature and impact resistance allow for the production of long-lifespan travel and identity documents, whilst the ability to embed visual security features within its structure makes it ideal as a

substrate for high-security governmentissued documents. The layers that make up the polycarbonate card or passport datapage are fused together during production and cannot be pulled apart individually. The optical imagery contained within the card structure cannot easily be accessed or tampered with using any mechanical means, providing a robust solution for securing personal data against any form of manipulation and attack.

Traditionally, DOVIDs (Diffractive Optical Variable Image Device) in polycarbonate documents have, however, been limited to localised applications integrated into the card body as hot-stamping foil in the form of a patch covering, typically, part of the document holder’s image and some of the biographical data.

As a result, this has confined DOVID design and its visual effects to an area of around 20x20mm, limiting the full potential of DOVIDs and what they can deliver optically.

Another major drawback has been the use of adhesives which are known to impact the optical brightness of the DOVID over time.

IHMA Recommends Holograms to Protect Against False Results

The International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA) has sent out a strong message through media outlets of the threats posed by counterfeiters to the response to the pandemic, and the steps that manufacturers and public health administrators can take to protect themselves and the public.

The message from the IHMA comes in the wake of recent reports of illicit sales of fake negative COVID-19 test results. They are becoming more widespread as criminals look to profit from travel restrictions imposed during the pandemic, according to Europol which has reported an increase in cases of fraudulent COVID-19 test certificates being sold to travellers.

This follows an increasing number of countries in the EU and beyond requiring travellers to provide a negative coronavirus test in order to entry, when travelling from a high-risk area.

According to the IHMA this development strengthens concerns about manufacturers and the public being targeted for exploitation by unscrupulous counterfeiters looking to cash in on the trade in illicit goods and services as the pandemic continues to sweep the globe.

Fake test results are just one example of a range of fraudulent activity that has emerged during the COVID crisis.

E-LIDOGRAM PC Inlay showing DOVID spread across the whole of the datapage.

MuseumEye Mixes Holograms with Reality to Bring History to Life

HoloLens hardware, and new software called ‘MuseumEye’ that left guests dodging warring charioteers, and dusting for ancient relics.

Making these ancient artefacts more accessible to visitors required the research team to 3D scan many of the exhibits, so that they could be rendered digitally as manipulable 3D objects. Scanned antiques were then fed into a programme called ‘Unity’ which helped them map hand movements on to tasks – a pinch, for instance, was coded as a command to make an artefact smaller.

Depending on personal (probably childhood) experiences, museums can either be cathedrals to culture, science and history, or dusty halls filled with old stuff. But now, a lecturer in computer games and a research fellow in computing are using mixed reality applications to superimpose holograms with the visitor’s surroundings to bring life to museum displays.

The visualisation of historical information and storytelling in museums is a way of transferring knowledge by directly and simplistically engaging the museum audience. Until recently, technological limitations meant museums were limited to 2D and 3D screen-based information displays. However, advancements in Mixed Reality (MR) devices permit the projection of a virtual overlay that amalgamates both real-world and virtual environments into a single scene.

These holographical devices project a 3D space around the user which can be augmented with virtual artefacts, thus potentially changing the traditional museum visitor experience.

Unlike the total immersion of virtual reality (VR), or the computer screen required for augmented reality (AR), MR uses a head-mounted glass display, similar to the Google Glass spectacles, which enables the user to see their real-world surroundings while virtual features are overlayed on top, creating a sense of mixed perception.

To manage this feat, MR devices are equipped with sensors which are crucial for tracking the user’s movement. MR devices are also equipped with cameras, which detect cues from the environment to assist in the seamless superimposition of virtual features onto the physical world. All of this is achieved through the projection of 3D graphics onto the glass display – a process that creates a hologram.

Ramy Hammady, Lecturer in Computer Games at Solent University (UK) and Carl Strathearn, Research Fellow, Computing, Edinburgh Napier University (UK) tried to incorporate some of these features into their own experimental MR study at Cairo’s Egyptian Museum – which used Microsoft

The MR exhibition’s moving characters were modelled in the programmes ‘zBrush’ and ‘Autodesk Maya’. As a result of this coding work, visitors could ‘pull items off the shelf’ and examine them in detail, using hand gestures sensed by the HoloLens. Elsewhere, they animated re-enactments of how the ancient Egyptian empire once went to war, with soldiers and chariots racing around exhibition rooms.

They also offered guests the opportunity to become an archaeologist for the day, unlocking treasures hidden around the museum. By scoring points on discoveries made, the museum learning process was turned into a game – something that’s been shown to improve educational outcomes from museum visits.

Holographic history

A number of other museums have begun experimenting with MR. The National Holocaust Centre and Museum in the UK used the HoloLens to powerful effect in their ‘Witnessing the Kindertransport’ exhibition. Over in New York, the Intrepid, Air & Sea Museum hosted an MR installation called ‘Defying Gravity: Women in Space’. And in Washington DC, the National Geographic Museum hosted ‘Becoming Jane’ as a way to immerse visitors in the life and work of chimpanzee researcher Dr Jane Goodall. As MR technology remains in its infancy, the devices currently available to developers are both limited and expensive – which is why the Egyptian Museum is not currently deploying the MR that Hammady and Strathearn’s team developed.

The MuseumEye software has shown how MR technology can bring history to life, delivering benefits to both museums and their guests. With the release of new, reasonably priced MR hardware, and the further development of hologram software, museums are expected to increase their engagement with MR in the coming years.

Holograms Help Protect Proof-of-Vaccination Card

Compliance management and infectious disease screening company CastleBranch has become one of the first companies in the world to issue Real Vaccination ID Cards, which use holography as a key security feature.

These documents can be easily forged, at a time when their authenticity is more important than ever as organisations such as healthcare facilities, schools, workplaces, airlines, concert venues and places of business rely on them to verify an individual's vaccination status prior to permitting admission.

CastleBranch has taken measures to ensure that the Real Vaccination ID cards contain all the information required to establish vaccination status, such as name, address, date of birth, physical identifiers, photo, and a QR code while utilising sophisticated anti-fraud technology to protect against tampering and counterfeiting.

They include trusted anti-counterfeit technologies such as ultraviolet ink, microtext, holographic film and silver foil to prevent fraud and forgery.

IHMA Recommends Holograms

Counterfeit coronavirus testing kits have been sold and online scams have risen during the health crisis, with criminals exploiting millions of people now working from home. Seizures of fake test kits were reported by both the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the World Customs Organisation during 2020 and comes at a time when the counterfeit market represents an estimated 7% of global trade.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that a growing volume of fake medicines are on sale in developing countries, while Interpol has seen an increase in fake medical products. And despite efforts from businesses, counterfeits continue to seriously harm brands while customers are being duped.

According to North Carolina-based CastleBranch, the cards incorporate forgery-prevention technology to help individuals prove they've received the COVID-19 vaccine. Each card will be paired with a unique access code that, when the cardholder grants permission, can be used to electronically verify the individual's identity, vaccination status, and view validated primary-source vaccine documents.

With the CastleBranch Real Vaccination ID card, individuals will have thirdparty verified, physical evidence of their vaccination status. Cards will include built-in fraud-prevention measures, providing greater confidence to their authenticity and affording the bearer greater freedom of movement. The individual will retain complete control and ownership over their own personal data, ensuring their selfsovereign digital identity is only used in a manner they see fit.

Currently, many organisations, including the CDC (the Center for Disease Control and Prevention), only issue paper forms from a patchwork of laboratories to confirm an individual's vaccination status.

Because of these measures, says CastleBranch, individuals and organisations can trust that the person holding a Real Vaccination ID Card, who matches their photo ID and signature to those on the card, is in fact the real individual who has obtained the COVID-19 vaccination, and can further validate the status electronically via an access code when granted permission by the cardholder.

CastleBranch assures that private data on the individual will never be shared or collected in a database and distributed to third parties, ensuring a ‘Nothing About Me Without Me™’ approach that enables individuals to maintain control of their own self-sovereign digital identity.

Before qualifying for a Real Vaccination ID card, individuals will be asked to submit vaccination documentation to CastleBranch for review by trained specialists.

CastleBranch will confirm vaccine manufacturer, administration date, time between doses, and verify the individual's identity in a manner consistent with US state and federal privacy laws before a Real Vaccination ID card is issued.

Prior to issuing the Real Vaccination ID Card, CastleBranch had tracked, reviewed, and/or stored over 35 million medical documents – including complex vaccination and immunisation documentation – for a majority of healthcare education programs in every state across the nation.

Counterfeiting is a multibillion-dollar global problem, but the current crisis only exacerbates the situation, says the IHMA, which is urging supply chains and authorities to be extra vigilant and review how they tackle the threats. They may even have to bring forward plans for investment in authentication and verification technologies to protect brands, profits and reputation.

Indeed, an IHMA poll revealed that that almost 50% of manufacturers and suppliers of holograms had seen an increase in demand from customers, specifiers and end-users for devices and technologies in the face of COVID.

Dr Paul Dunn, chair of the IHMA, says: ‘COVID continues to present opportunities for criminals, who are infiltrating global supply channels, deploying scams and counterfeiting measures to trick consumers and damage manufacturers. Furthermore, items such as falsified medicines and test kits can pose a terrible threat and can endanger lives.’

‘Holograms can be effective in the frontline fight against counterfeiters and fraudsters, protecting brands and profits. Those involved in the supply chain are reassured by their presence on products, recognising the security and financial benefits provided.’

in Brief

A New PhotostimulationHolographicSolution

Manufacturer and supplier of laboratory instruments, Scientifica, has launched the HoloStim-3D - a compact module that integrates with the company’s HyperScope multiphoton imaging system to provide a fully integrated Spatial Light Modulator (SLM) based photostimulation solution. By shaping laser beams to generate defined light patterns, with individual points projected onto specific cells or cell structures in a biological sample, holographic photostimulation enables the active interrogation of large 3D networks.

Natan T Shaked from Tel-Aviv University, Israel is recognised for significant contributions in biomedical holography, developing clinical portable holographic modules, and for novel holographic multiplexing and machinelearning approaches.

Enrique Tajahuerce of the Universitat Jaume I, Spain receives his award for achievements in optical security and computational imaging using digital holography and single-pixel imaging techniques.

A record 261 nominations were received this year, making this program extremely competitive as no more than 10% of OSA’s total membership may be elected as Fellows.

Covestro and Ceres Holographics Announce Strategic Partnership

Scottish technology provider Ceres Holographics has announced a strategic partnership with Covestro to commercialize Bayfol® HX photopolymer films for transparent automotive display applications.

OpSec Introduces Lisa Arrowsmith, Chief Product Officer

OpSec Security, provider of brand protection and product authentication solutions, has appointed Lisa Arrowsmith to join its executive team as Chief Product Officer. Lisa is responsible for delivering products and services across the company’s online and on-product solutions offerings. She is also responsible for embedding customer-centric design into the product roadmap and supporting OpSec Security in delivering protection and authentication solutions.

This all-optical solution enables simultaneous imaging and photostimulation of hundreds of individual cells in 3D, to clearly identify the role of neural subtypes and individual neurons in brain circuits and behaviour. Cells and subcellular structures in deep brain tissue can be targeted, generating high-quality results. The design of the HyperScope and HoloStim-3D allows different imaging and stimulation wavelengths to freely combine, for excitation and imaging of target cells expressing different opsins – a group of proteins made light-sensitive via bio-chemicals in the photoreceptors of the brain. Fast switching of stimulation patterns means neuronal firing can be more closely mimicked.

Two OSA 2021 Fellowships Awarded for Holography

The OSA (The Optical Society) has announced the 118 members of the 2021 class of OSA Fellow Members, who will be recognised at OSA conferences throughout the year for scientific, engineering and technological contributions, as well as industry leadership and service to OSA and the global optics community.

Amongst the cohort of OSA Fellow Members for 2021 are two recipients whose citations include recognition of their work in holography.

Ceres Holographics uses these to create specialty solutions with customised holographic optical elements (HOEs) designed to enable a new generation of transparent display applications for automobiles and commercial vehicles (see HN January 2020).

The new partnership represents the next stage in what has already been a long-standing cooperation between the two companies.

Covestro is a German company which produces a variety of polyurethane and polycarbonate based raw materials. Bayfol® HX film is a transparent and thin film featuring a light-sensitive, selfdeveloping photopolymer. It is ideal for the reproduction of efficient volume holograms. Throughout their collaboration to date, the two partners have customised the film to meet the specific requirements of the mobility sector.

Ceres holographic transparent display technology has already been successfully demonstrated in OEM prototypes, enabling full-colour display of information on front, side and rear car windows. Ceres is currently involved in go-to-market programs with several global commercial vehicle and automotive OEMs targeting production dates between 2022 and 2025.

Arrowsmith joins OpSec Security following senior leadership and product management positions with global technology and B2B data companies such as Omdia and IHS Markit, where she was responsible for strategy development, product and platform integration, and customer-driven product design, serving clients across diverse industries, including software, display technologies, consumer electronics, media, service providers and platforms.

Arrowsmith comments, ‘I'm excited for the opportunity to work with OpSec Security’s industry leading product and service offerings – and to harness OpSec’s existing and new capabilities to deliver integrated product solutions. As a member of the executive team, I’m looking forward to contributing to the company’s growth strategy and to build upon our ability to lead innovation in the brand protection and product authentication industry.’

Dr Selva Selvaratnam, CEO, OpSec Security said, ‘Lisa’s experience and product management knowledge continues our journey to strengthen our leadership team, and our commitment to be the most advanced and innovative company in our industry. Lisa’s background completely fits in with our core values of customer first focus and delivering exceptional service. She will play a critical role in continuing our mission to design and deliver the highest quality solutions for our current and future clients.’

New Applications for 3D ‘Holograms’

Heightened reality displays, using the term ‘hologram’ as a shorthand, have entered the technology lexicon. In this review of new ways to bring solidity and depth to images, we highlight three examples of applications that have caught the eye.

In Switzerland, start-up company Imverse has created software that turns live people into holograms that can be controlled in real-time as a kind of avatar. Using depth cameras together with real-time graphics video technology, the company’s core technology is based on Voxels, where each volumetric pixel is rendered to produce realistic 3D digital humans, viewable on virtual, augmented and mixed reality devices and light field displays.

The company won a Consumer Electronics Show CES 2021 Best of Innovation award for its Live3D voxelrendering engine and software that allows real-time capturing, editing and streaming of real-time holograms of multiple people simultaneously. The live data manipulation and dynamic scene rendering has applications in telepresence, remote collaboration, teleconferencing, gaming, telehealth, online education and live entertainment.

Another firm using the idea of volumetric data processing to create images that appear solid and life like is Australianbased Voxon Photonics. But for Voxon, the 3D data is sliced before it is pieced back together in a sequence of layers. ‘A Voxon display operates much like a 3D printer. We take 3D data and slice it up into hundreds of layers. Those layers are then projected one at a time onto a specially designed high-speed reciprocating screen,’ Voxon explained.

Voxon’s device builds an object right before your eyes using ‘millions of points of light’ to produce a physical body of light within a space, rather than on a screen. Thanks to the powerful processing ability of our brains, the visual perception naturally blends the images together to create a 3D object that you can view from any angle as though you were viewing the real object. ‘Traditional approaches to viewing 3D require headsets or LCD screens with limited viewing angles,’ the company stated. ‘Voxon displays are designed to form the centerpiece of an interactive experience. They are designed to sit in the middle of a social gathering, where conversation and eye contact are natural, and ideas can be shared.’

Meantime in France, circus founders Sandrine and Joseph Bouglione are currently planning a new circus show featuring holographic whales and a dancing bear, both projected onto a screen on stage.

Mr Bouglione told news source FranceInfo: ‘the idea is to show that we can be entertained and amazed by the beauty and charisma of wild animals while leaving them in peace in their natural habitats.’

The practice of using holograms to replace circus animals is already established in Germany. The idea came to the founder of Circus Roncalli, Bernhard Paul, when he was watching the NFL Super Bowl half-time show in 2018. During the performance, Justin Timberlake was seen singing alongside a hologram of the music legend Prince, who had passed away two years earlier. The circus uses 11 projectors to create the holograms and other projections in their show and the results are breathtaking. Now there are hologram horses that appear out of nowhere, stampeding around the circus ring, as well as elephants and even fish.

E-LIDOGRAM PC Inlay (Continued)

The E-LIDOGRAM Polycarbonate Inlay is a new generation of ultra-secure optical solutions for government-issued documents. The new offering introduces an array of stateof-the-art features spread over the entire surface of the card or passport datapage, providing enhanced visual effects for reliable, unambiguous and quick first-line authentication of travel and identity documents.

Unlike traditional solutions, the optical nanostructures are embossed directly into polycarbonate without the use of adhesives, and integrated within the card or passport datapage during the standard collation and lamination process, guaranteeing full brightness of the imagery for the whole lifespan of the document.

The features can be placed in any arrangement across the whole of the card or passport datapage, giving DOVID design a wide spectrum of possibilities and high visual impact. As a result, says Demax, the imagery creates an organic unit with background graphics and individual security elements to deliver superior optical effects and tamper-resistant security for polycarbonate documents.

Demax uses the latest generation of e-beam lithography for origination, which achieves a line width resolution of 8 nanometres, allowing unique and differentiable features to be produced. With high-resolution vectorbased graphics, the system writes nanoscale patterns producing subwavelength structures with visual effects that are distinct from conventional holograms.

The technology is marketed by Demax as the E-LIDOGRAM® and offers a range of overt features, including non-iridescent colourshifting effects such as green changing to red and vice versa; multicolour-shifting effects such as pink switching to green, violet, blue or yellow depending on the viewing angle; motion-type features with objects displaying full displacement in their apparent position from left to right, up to down and vice versa when the document is tilted; as well as three-dimensional effects reproducing lifelike appearance of objects; pastel colour based features and the diffractive black used to recreate the intricate detail of individual elements such as facial features.

The E-LIDOGRAM inlay comes with a gamut of these as well as more traditional diffractive effects depending on customer requirements, which can include bright iridescent animations, kinetic and flipping images, metallisation, lens effects, covert laser readable images, micro text and nano graphics. The product is supplied pre-embossed on polycarbonate in reel or sheet form depending on equipment used in card production.

New Directory for the ID Industry

Reconnaissance International (RI), publisher of ID & Secure Document News™, sister publication to Holography News®, and a range of security print related special reports and supplier directories, announces the first edition of a new comprehensive guide to the ID and secure document industry which is due for publication later this year.

Building on RI’s extensive database and analytical tools, the Directory of ID & Secure Document Suppliers will become the handbook of the growing array of technologies and systems for the production, personalisation, protection, deployment and integration of identity, travel and governmentissued secure documents. It is modelled on the Directory of Currency Suppliers, also published by RI and now in its sixth edition, which has become the de facto definitive guide for the currency industry.

The ID and secure document industry is seeing unprecedented changes as it adapts to the shifting business environment and its response to the COVID pandemic. The raised awareness amongst governments and enterprises of the importance of ID and secure document management in the face of initiatives to link health status to identity increases the urgency for the creation of the definitive guide to whodoes-what in the sector.

The Directory of ID & Secure Document Suppliers will comprise 80+ A4 pages, around 400 supplier listings and be available in print and digital formats. The listings will be conveniently grouped into six sections that reflect the diversity of the industry: cards, paper-based documents, passports, production equipment, biometrics, and software/ hardware and services.

A limited number of advertising opportunities are now available. The directory will be supplied free-of-charge to government secure document issuers and as an advertiser you can allocate complimentary copies for your potential and existing customers.

For more information on advertising opportunities, contact sam@reconintl.com. To complete your supplier listing form to ensure entry, visit https:// securedocumentnews.com/directory/

Improved Holographic Displays EnhanceCouldVirtual and Augmented Reality

Researchers have developed a new approach that improves the image quality and contrast of holographic displays. The new technology could help improve near-eye displays used for virtual and augmented reality applications.

‘Augmented and virtual reality systems are poised to have a transformative impact on our society by providing a seamless interface between a user and the digital world,’ said research team member Jonghyun Kim from technology company NVIDIA and Stanford University. ‘Holographic displays could overcome some of the biggest remaining challenges for these systems by improving the user experience and enabling more compact devices.’

In Optica, the Optical Society's (OSA) journal for optical research, the researchers describe their new holography display technology called Michelson holography. The approach combines a new optical setup inspired by Michelson interferometry with a recent software development. The setup generates the interference patterns necessary for making digital holograms. ‘Although we've recently seen tremendous progress in machine-learning driven computer-generated holography, these algorithms are fundamentally limited by the underlying hardware,’ said Kim. ‘We co-designed a new hardware configuration and a new algorithm to overcome some of these limitations and demonstrate state-ofthe-art results.’

Improving the quality of holographic displays has the potential to outperform other 3D display technologies used for virtual and augmented reality by enabling more compact displays, improving the user's ability to focus their eyes at different distances and offering the ability to adjust for users who wear corrective lenses. However, the technology hasn't yet achieved the image quality of more conventional technologies.

For holographic displays, image quality is limited by an optical component known as a phase-only spatial light modulator (SLM). SLMs create the diffracted light that makes the interference pattern needed to form visible 3D images. However, the phase-only

SLMs typically used for holography exhibit a low diffraction efficiency that significantly degrades observed image quality, especially image contrast.

Because it is difficult to dramatically increase the diffraction efficiency of SLMs, the researchers designed a completely new optical architecture to create holographic images. Rather than using a single phaseonly SLM like most setups, their Michelson holography approach uses two phase-only SLMs.

‘The core idea of Michelson holography is to destructively interfere with the diffracted light of one SLM using the undiffracted light of the other,’ said Kim. ‘This allows the undiffracted light to contribute to forming the image rather than creating speckle and other artefacts.’

Optimising the image, the researchers combined this new hardware arrangement with a camera-in-the-loop (CITL) optimisation procedure they modified for their optical setup. CITL optimisation is a computational approach that can be used to optimise a hologram directly or to train a computer model based on a neural network.

CITL allowed the researchers to use a camera to capture a series of displayed images. This meant they could correct small misalignments of the optical system without using any precise measuring devices.

The researchers tested their new Michelson holography architecture using a benchtop optical setup in their lab. They used it to display several 2D and 3D holographic images, which were recorded with a conventional camera. The demonstration showed that the dual-SLM holographic display with CITL calibration provides significantly better image quality than existing computer-generated hologram approaches.

Making the new system practical would require translating the benchtop setup into a system that would be small enough to incorporate into a wearable augmented or virtual reality system. The researchers point out that their approach of codesigning hardware and software could be useful for improving other applications of computational displays and computational imaging in general.

KRYPTEN Releases Updated eCatalog App

Russian-based producer of holograms and optical security components, KRYPTEN, has launched a new version of its eCatalog Mobile App covering technologies for banknotes, secure documents, and brand protection. The KRYPTEN eCatalog holds a portfolio of the company’s optical security elements that allows the user to explore, verify and learn about the company’s technologies directly from their smartphone.

Andrey Smirnov, head of KRYPTEN’s Holographic Lab, highlights the advantages of the eCatalog: ‘due to the pandemic, which limits participation in offline exhibitions and conferences, we have developed the KRYPTEN eCatalog App for remote studying of optical security elements.

Any user, including our partners and customers, can get a physical sample of our product by mail, download the app, and use it to immediately receive interactive data about the sample. The app saves time on searching information from different resources such as websites, emails and printed booklets and engages a person in the examination of security features.’

The KRYPTEN eCatalog App is suitable both for remote studying of a security feature and for the detailed examination of a real sample. The updated app includes the identification of demo products by a QR

code. The physical sample contains a QR code that can be scanned using the app. When the code is read, the app immediately displays information about the product. The user can flip through expanded details with images and descriptions of security effects and their technical characteristics.

Technology selection

The KRYPTEN eCatalog is also useful for studying optical security features when the user doesn’t have a product sample in front of them. In the eCatalog, optical security technologies are conveniently divided into three groups:

Banknote protection Brand protection ID document security.

By selecting a category, the user accesses examples of security elements and their application. The eCatalog displays all KRYPTEN’s developments and proprietary technologies. Information about new products is immediately updated in the app. The eCatalog App also reveals the security features of each element. The user gets access to images and descriptions of all the visual effects of a particular element. Additionally, the app gives instructions on how to identify the effects to determine the authenticity of the security feature.

The KRYPTEN eCatalog Mobile App is available for Android and iOS

Hole Hologram Improves Ultrasound Imaging

Although its origins trace back to the 1960s, acoustic holography as a field has been hampered by the noise created by widespread reflection and scattering. In optical holography, this problem is mitigated by use of baffles, equipment and judicious choice of material to reduce specular reflection; medical ultrasound as yet offers no such fix.

But in a recent study published in IEEE Sensors Journal, a group of researchers report an improved method for creating acoustic holograms. While the advance won’t lead to treatment with acoustic holograms in the immediate future, the improved technique yields higher sensitivity and a better focusing effect than previous acoustic hologram methods.

There are a number of intriguing possibilities that come with manipulation using sound, including medical applications. Ultrasound can penetrate human tissues and is already used for medical imaging. But more precise manipulation and imaging of human tissues using 3D holographic ultrasound could lead to completely new therapies using sound – including neuromodulation – the alteration of nerve activity through targeted delivery of a stimulus.

The nature of sound itself poses the first hurdle. ‘The medical application of acoustic holograms is limited owing to the sound reflection and scattering at the acoustic holographic surface and its internal attenuation,’ explains Chunlong Fei, an associate professor at Xidian University, Shaanxi, China, who is involved in the study.

To address these issues, his team created their acoustic hologram via a ‘lens’ consisting of a disc with a hole at its centre. They placed a 1 MHz ultrasound transducer in water and used the outer part of the transducer surface to create the hologram. By creating a hole in the centre of the lens, the centre of the transducer generates and receives soundwaves with less reflection and scattering.

Improved Improve Ultrasound Imaging (Continued)

Next, the researchers compared their new disc approach to more conventional acoustic hologram techniques. They performed this A vs B comparison via ultrasound holographic images of several thin needles, 1.25 millimetres in diameter or less.

‘The most notable feature of the holehologram we proposed is that it has high sensitivity and maintains good focusing effect [thanks to the] holographic lens,’ says Fei. He notes that these features will lead to less scattering and propagation loss than what occurs with traditional acoustic holograms.

Fei envisions several different ways in which this approach could one day be applied medically, for example by complementing existing medical imaging probes to achieve better resolution, or for applications such as nerve regulation or non-invasive brain stimulation. However, the current set up, using water, would need to be modified to be more suitable for medical setting, along with several next steps related to characterising and manipulating the hologram, says Fei.

The varied design improvements Fei’s team hopes to develop match the equally eclectic possible applications of ultrasonic hologram technology. In the future, Fei says they hope acoustic holographic devices

might achieve super-resolution imaging, particle trapping, selective biological tissue heating – and even find new applications in personalised medicine.

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Setup for an initial test run the Xidan University group performed of their ultrasonic hologram apparatus (© Xidian University/IEEE).

Holograms Good Enough to Eat

We’ve seen holograms used to decorate nails, garments, buildings and makeup. But now research conducted at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi suggests that food might be the next area for the commercial use of holograms.

Chocolatiers, like Morphotonix in Switzerland, have already demonstrated holographic effects on chocolate that are created directly from the injection-moulded or thermo-formed chocolate plastic moulds. They give the chocolate surface a specific controlled roughness that diffracts the light and makes it shiny.

‘But beyond aesthetics, holograms on food – specifically, edible holograms – could be used to reduce packaging needs, for example, as information about nutritional content, or labels could be printed directly onto the food item,’ Dr. Haider Butt, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Khalifa University said. ‘To that end, we developed a quick and low-cost fabrication method for producing holograms on corn syrup films.’

The researchers have recently published their findings in ANC Nano (American Chemical Society)*.

Butt and his team used holographic direct laser interference patterning (DLIP) – a direct, simple, low cost and rapid technique that requires only one processing step and doesn't require masks or templates. They developed a DLIP method to directly pattern one-dimensional nanostructures on edible substrates (dried films of corn syrup).

NFCHOLO™ Technology to Protect ID Documents

Russian-based producer of holograms and other security elements, Krypten, has developed NFCHOLO™ technology for ID document security. NFCHOLO can be used for plastic documents that require authentication and security of the owner's data. These can be ID cards, travel cards, employee ID cards, access control cards and certificates.

NFCHOLO is a security hologram with an integrated NFC (near-field communication) chip. The holographic image of NFCHOLO provides visual security effects as well as serving as an antenna for transmitting the NFC signal. This differs from the conventional method of applying holographic labels to ready-made NFC modules. The special configuration of the conductive metallised layer of the hologram, together with the chip, form a holographic NFC module. As a result, NFCHOLO works as a single feature: the holographic image simultaneously acts as an NFC signal conductor and an optical security element. If there is an attempt to replace a hologram or NFC chip, the holographic NFC module is destroyed, and its functions are disrupted.

Periodic gratings produced at two different tilt angles on corn syrup thin films observed under an optical microscope (© Dr Haider Butt, Khalifa University).

Holographic chocolate surfaces (© Morphotonix).

Microsoft's New Mesh Platform Turns Colleagues into Holograms

As with HoloLens in general, Microsoft considers industry its main customer base for the moment, but it’s looking beyond the work environment to other settings, including theatres. Microsoft is working with the aquatic research organisation, OceanX, to add ‘holographic laboratories’ to their ships in order to aid in its scientific pursuits. The company also suggests a situation in which people from various locations attend one central performance. Microsoft has already begun work with the company behind Cirque Du Soleil to provide access to shows via mixed reality.

In recent times we have seen the increasing use of augmented (AR) and virtual reality (VR) headgear to enhance the experience of seeing, hearing and interfacing with digital content. But with the increased reliance on remote working in response to COVID-19, technology giant Microsoft is looking to use AR and VR to create a holographic space for workers to collaborate.

During the keynote address at the company’s Ignite conference, Microsoft provided an early look at its Mesh platform, which would enable users to wear AR headsets (such as Microsoft’s own HoloLens) to offer virtual collaborative opportunities across a variety of apps, from games to Office.

Mesh envisions a mixed reality application, in which holographic avatars can interact with objects that appear in your physical space. As an example, imagine standing in your living room while a large interactive globe spins in front of you and a co-worker or teacher’s holographic avatar interacts with it.

The platform doesn’t try to ‘trick’ you into believing that you are physically present in the collaborative space as the other people’s avatars are clearly digital in nature; they are ghostly translucent characters rather like a poorly lit reflection hologram.

Natural extension of HoloLens

In many ways, Mesh is the natural extension of HoloLens. Microsoft’s head-mounted smart display already overlays digital directions and objects onto real-world settings. Mesh can bring more people into the viewer’s space so that you and each of the other people can manipulate digital versions of the objects.

Microsoft Mesh will also enable geographically distributed teams to have more collaborative meetings, conduct virtual design sessions, assist others, learn together and host virtual social meetups. People will initially be able to express themselves as avatars in these shared virtual experiences and over time use ‘holoportation’ to project themselves as their most lifelike, photorealistic selves, the company said.

For years, Cirque du Soleil co-founder Guy Laliberté received proposals from virtual reality technologies, but they couldn’t match the magic of his intensely visual and mesmerising live performances. That notwithstanding, he appeared at Microsoft’s Ignite conference via holoportation, which uses 3D capture technology to project a lifelike image of a person into a virtual scene.

Holograms in the cloud

The new Mesh platform is the result of years of Microsoft research and development in areas ranging from hand and eye tracking and HoloLens development to creating persistent holograms and artificial intelligence (AI) models that can create expressive avatars.

Built on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Microsoft Mesh benefits from Azure’s security and privacy features, as well as its vast computational resources, data, AI and mixed reality services.

In these collaborative experiences, the holographic content is not inside a device or inside an application. The content is in the cloud, and you just need the special headgear to see it.

With Microsoft Mesh-enabled applications, designers or engineers who work with 3D physical models - anything from bicycles to high-end furniture to jet engines to new sports stadiums - could appear as themselves in a shared virtual space to collaborate and iterate on holographic models, regardless of their physical location.

For now, Microsoft is committed to making Mesh available across different devices. If you want to experience the threedimensional aspects of the technology, you’ll need an AR or VR headset, but the company hopes to make the experiences equally accessible for people using smartphones or tablets.

News in Brief

New Warrant Cards with Heightened Security

All officers serving with London’s Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) are to be issued with new warrant cards amid concerns over the growing number of highly convincing fake versions in circulation.

The five categories and brief description of UFlex’s winning entries are:

Labels. Registered lens technology with holographic labels for Sona Sikka. Sona Sikka was launched as an anti-counterfeit solution for the copying challenges faced by the FMCG industry. The holographic/ fresnel lens images are re-registered on the label.

Product packaging. Holographic PVC for pharma blister packaging for Alkem, which was launched as an anticounterfeit solution for the pharmaceutical industry. The 250-micron blister grade PVC is integrated with a holographic layer and is metallised to provide anticounterfeit features.

The new versions are expected to include electronic chips that store data about the cardholder, along with a security hologram and a number of other security features. The new cards will also provide better access to secure buildings and transportation hubs.

The upgrade, already agreed by the Mayor of London’s office, will cost around £650,000.

Although anyone found using a fake warrant card faces being charged with impersonating a police officer, an offence that carries a maximum six-month prison sentence, such cards are widely available online.

Throughout the pandemic there has been a steady stream of cases in which members of the public have been duped into paying on-the-spot fines by criminals posing as police officers, many of whom carry fake ID cards.

A statement issued by the MPS said: ‘as part of a review of its physical and personnel security infrastructure, the Met is updating access equipment across its estate to take advantage of the latest technology and the added security features it provides.’

‘The decision to update access arrangements was not a response to a specific security concern but part of a continuously evolving assessment of how the Met can make the best use of available technology to protect the public, its officers, staff and information.’

UFlex

Wins Star Awards

The South Indian Education Society (SIES) School of Packaging (SOP) has announced the winners of this year’s SOP Star Awards. Among the 31 winning companies from more than 130 entries, UFlex grabbed the lion’s share with 12 awards – five of which were for its holography business.

Product packaging. Transparent UV HRI holographic film for carton packaging - a two-layered flexible packaging with a combination of UV holographic and micro embossing with attributes such as high refractive index coating and films with security feature lenses.

Packaging for non-packaging applications. Dhoop Chhao textile printing foil. Dhoop Chhao is a decorative textile foil with a specialised coating that is environmentally friendly. It gives a special effect after printing on fabric compared to traditional metallic printings.

Packaging in academics. Printing security documents for the education sector. The purpose of introducing security printing on mark sheets and certificates was to prevent counterfeiting and frauds but it also makes these documents/certificates non-tearable and water-resistant.

VISUA and De La Rue Partner for AuthenticationHolographic

Specialist brand design studio, VISUA, has announced the integration of its recently released Holographic Authentication Engine into De La Rue’s new DLR Validate™ solution. This marks the culmination of a 12-month collaboration to develop an accurate, automated method for scanning and visually authenticating De La Rue’s range of holographic security labels. Holographic labels have become one of the most popular and secure product authentication mechanisms in recent years, and today are ubiquitous among consumer products, tax stamps, and electronic components, among many others, says VISUA. But as consumer trust in hologram labels has grown, it has led bad actors to counterfeit these too.

VISUA claims that its Holographic Authentication Engine delivers reliable, instant validation. This makes it simple and intuitive to use by anyone, at any point in the supply chain. It can also be delivered anywhere within VISUA’s Deploy-Anywhere framework, allowing it to be deployed in the cloud, on-premises, or on-device. The latter is especially important where visual product authentication is required in remote areas with no access to wireless communications. This collaboration follows exhaustive investigations and tests of multiple VisualAI/Computer Vision solutions by De La Rue, whose findings were that VISUA was the only company with the technology and capabilities to deliver the functionality, accuracy and reliability required to meet their needs. Specifically, VISUA’s range of Visual-AI technologies, including its Logo Detection, Text Detection, and Custom Object Detection engines, will help enhance De La Rue’s authentication offerings in the future.

Pokémon Happy Meal Promotion Contains Rare Holographic Cards

Memories of the holographic baseball card craze of the 1980s and 1990s, which saw holographic imagery and branding from companies such as Upper Deck, Topps and Pinnacle fuel the highly inflated secondary trading card market, are being revived as McDonald's celebrates the 25th anniversary of Pokémon with a special Happy Meal promotion.

Select locations are selling Happy Meal boxes that look like Pikachu's face. They also come with 50 collectible Pokémon cards, including some rare holographic cards, leading some collectors to buy large amounts of the children’s meals so they can collect all the cards.

Some fans are apparently waking up early so they can be the first in the stores and buy all the Happy Meals, while others are buying the boxes but throwing out the food. This has led some McDonald's to limit the number of Happy Meals a single customer can buy at a time. Some of the card stock is even being sold online in the boxed packaging for $1,000.

Pokémon cards are extremely popular, with rare cards often going for tens of thousands of dollars at auction houses. Recently, a Charizard #4 first edition base set rare hologram trading card sold for over $105,000, while a Secret Super Battle No 1 Trainer hologram promo Trainer trading card went for $90,000!

The Virtual Museum of Holography – an Interview with Linda Law

Holography, as a display medium, is undergoing a third birth. With the commercialisation of lasers in the late 1960s, conditions for the nascent technique of wavefront reconstruction fell into place. 20 years later saw techniques for combining movie footage from a series of viewpoints to create auto-stereoscopic displays. And now, fostered by advances in image processing, machine learning, lightweight miniaturised diffractive optics and low cost-per-pixel smartphones, there is a new holographic industry of heightened reality imagery emerging.

To begin with my background… after college I was working in scientific research in the Immunology Department at Cambridge University. However, in 1971, the grant that funded me ended and a job opportunity opened up for me at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in the Biochemistry Department.

We were studying the conformational changes of adult and fetal hemoglobin as they take up and release oxygen molecules. This was in collaboration with Max Perutz, (Nobel Prize winner for the structure of the hemoglobin) at the MRC Labs in Cambridge. A part of the research I was working on required my use of an electron microscope. I found it fascinating when I learned later on that Dr Dennis Gabor discovered holography as part of a study to improve the imaging of electron microscopes.

As I learned more about the properties of holograms – such as the fact that each piece of the hologram contains information about the whole image; that you can create multiple exposures with images that interpenetrate each other; and that you can record slices of dimensional images in sequences that permit dimensional animation – an array of wonderful creative possibilities opened up in front of me. There was no other option in my mind – this was my medium of choice.

Q: You’ve also been involved in curating holographic exhibitions. Can you tell us a little about that?

One of the early practitioners of display holography, Linda Law, is a creator, writer and educator of holography and other heightened reality imagery. She is also Founding Director of the Virtual Museum of Holography, an institution with a mission to preserve the history of holography and catalogue the ongoing developments of the medium. Holography News™ caught up with Linda to find out more.

Q: Thanks for taking the time to reach out to readers of Holography News®. Can you tell us a little about your background before embarking on a career in holography?

A: I’m delighted to have the opportunity to share with you and your readers some of the exciting things that are happening with the Virtual Museum of Holography and the HoloCenter.

By 1975 I had realised that a part of me desired to express myself creatively through imagery. I was already exploring back and white photography as I had learned to process photographic images from the electron microscope (nothing was digital in those days). A colleague in an adjacent lab began telling me about holography and around that time I saw an advertisement in a New York paper, The Village Voice, about an exhibition of holograms at the International Center for Photography (ICP). Walking into that exhibition was a pivotal moment for me. At the bottom of the stairs leading up to the exhibition was a holographic stereogram of a hemoglobin molecule – the first hologram I ever saw. The odds of that happening are phenomenal. Our lab at Stony Brook was one of only a few labs around the world working on hemoglobin and that hologram, at that moment in 1975, was most likely the only hologram existing of a molecule of any kind.

That exhibition changed my life. From then on, I was committed to learning everything I could about Holography. I began my first course at the NY School of Holography in the autumn of 1975. A fellow student in my class was Rudie Berkhout and we shared a table to make our very first holograms, beginning a life-long friendship.

Q: Can you say what drew you to holography as a display medium in the first place?

A: Although I don’t think I fully realised it at the time, I am someone who thinks spatially. It is easy for me to see things spatially within my mind. So, immediately, I was aware of the creative possibilities of this medium.

A: I began curating exhibitions in the early 1980s while I was working at NY Institute of Technology in the Center for Optics, Lasers and Holography. Beginning with the exhibition at the 2nd Symposium on Holography at Lake Forest College, organised by the late Dr Tung Jeong, I went on to curate several exhibitions before I became the curator of the Museum of Holography (MOH) in 1986. At that time, the MOH was under the Direction of Ian Lancaster, the former Director of Reconnaissance International.

Over the years I have been involved in a number of exhibitions as an independent curator, but new developments have shifted me back into curating.

I recently became the Executive Director of the HoloCenter, which has a mission to provide access for artists to facilities to make holograms, present exhibitions of fine art holograms, and educate artists and the general public about holography.

The HoloCenter has been a primary place where fine art holograms can be experienced in New York, since the loss of the MOH, and has been a producer of traveling shows that have made it possible for a much wider audience to experience holographic art.

Q: Throughout your career you’ve had a passion for demystifying the science and art of holography through education. Are you still teaching?

A: Actually, after many years of teaching hands-on workshops about holography I switched to teaching online around 2013, when I taught a course in Digital Holography using Zebra Imaging to output my student’s images.

My courses have evolved as the technology has been changing and I am currently offering an introductory course, ‘Understanding Holograms – From Lasers to Light Fields’, as a primer for anyone wanting to fully understand what is and what is not a hologram.

Linda Law.

I am also partnering with holographic artist Melissa Crenshaw, who will be teaching a course about creating single beam holograms. Both of these courses begin this spring, will be taught via Zoom and are intended for a global audience.

In addition, the HoloCenter will be offering a new seminar series, once a month, via Zoom. The first three seminars will focus on the question ‘What is a Hologram?’. Beginning on 13 April, we will begin with a panel of early pioneers discussing the topic. The second seminar will feature a panel of holographic artists answering the same question and the third one will feature a panel of computer scientists and artists who are working with light fields, digital holographic displays and some of the immersive technologies that are often described as holographic.

Q: You’ve started a new venture with the foundation of the Virtual Museum of Holography (VMOH). Can you explain what are the museum’s goals?

A: In the 1980s we had the Museum of Holography in New York, founded by Posy Jackson, the Chicago Museum of Holography, founded by Lauren Billings and the Musée de l'Holographie, in Paris, founded by Anne-Marie Christakis. Sadly, all three museums had folded by the late 1990s.

We have a need for a museum that can be a repository for the vast amount of information that exists about holography in all its forms – art, science and commercial applications, but we also have a need for a place where holograms can easily be experienced by anyone around the world. Unfortunately, we are also in the process of losing some of the early holograms due to improper care of photographic emulsions, so it is imperative that we preserve these images, where we can, in a new digital format.

So, to summarise, our goals are to provide a unique, new form of museum that will address all of those issues.

Q: How will the museum achieve these ambitions?

A: First of all, we are developing a conventional website that will be a vast database of information about holography, encompassing papers, photographs, videos, and oral histories from interviews with holographic pioneers, artists, engineers, and scientists.

From this site you will be able to enter a portal into the Virtual Museum of Holography. By wearing a virtual reality (VR) headset or using one of the new digital holographic displays, you will enter a beautifully designed virtual museum space and be able to choose from an array of exhibitions to experience.

Of course, because this is a virtual museum, we can keep adding on galleries over time so there is the potential for us to have many exhibitions running concurrently.

Q: Will the museum run outreach programmes?

A: The VMOH is a project of the HoloCenter so both organisations will work together. The HoloCenter already has an exhibition program so we hope that the VMOH will generate much new interest in seeing the real thing, which in turn will generate traveling shows to museums and galleries around the world. Although we can create high quality facsimiles of holograms they will never be as good as the real thing and there is nothing like experiencing holograms directly.

The HoloCenter will continue to offer workshops about holography, artist residencies in facilities with advanced equipment, and seminars about holography with the intent to serve a broad audience interested in this evolving medium of holography.

Q: How can readers of HN get involved in the VMOH?

A: As manufacturers of holograms, we would love you to become a part of this project by sponsoring the VMOH. At this point in time there is an opportunity to become one of the Founding Sponsors of the VMOH and help us to take it to the next level.

As a Founding Sponsor your company logo and a link to your website will be listed on the VMOH website where it will be seen by everyone who visits. You will be invited to private views of exhibitions with unique opportunities to meet people interested in holography from around the world. Using Zoom and other newly emerging conferencing experiences that allow networking opportunities, these special events will be premier occasions for global communication.

We expect to have a beginning conventional website online by this spring and would like to be able to have a first virtual exhibition online in VR by the end of 2021.

Join us online for the new series of monthly seminars, utilise our workshops for training new staff about holography, seek our advice as consultants to help you to build your own collections of holographic fine art as investments for your company.

This is an opportunity to reach a growing audience that is hungry for dimensional experiences. The next few years will be a time of rapid growth in all forms of holography – we invite you to join us by supporting our global educational journey.

Holograms Good Enough to Eat

The holographic pattern created by this method depends on the number of interfering beams and their incident angles, polarisation, and intensity. The team notes that hologram surfaces diffracted a wide range of visible wavelengths depending on the tilt angle of the hologram with respect to the incident light.

The researchers deposited a thin layer of synthetic black dye (900 nm thickness) onto the corn syrup thin film in order to maximise the laser pulse absorption. This enabled the ablation process (which removes a significant portion of the black dye) to generate low-cost nanostructures on the surface of the corn syrup film.

‘Currently our work is limited because of the usage of commercial synthetic black dye,’ says Butt. ‘In the future, we will use food-grade dyes and optimise the pulsed laser's parameters accordingly for producing edible holograms.’

These edible holograms could find applications in areas of food safety, for instance as sensors for harmful bacteria or to monitor food quality and shelf life. Since the holograms can be used to print for instance nutritional information directly onto food items, they could also reduce the need for packaging materials. The researchers point out that a thorough future study is needed to quantify the shelf life of these holograms in different storage conditions. They also need to investigate the effects of temperature and moisture on the corn syrup.

* Direct Printing of Nanostructured Holograms on Consumable Substrates

Bader AlQattan, Joelle Doocey, Murad Ali, Israr Ahmed, Ahmed E. Salih, Fahad Alam, Magdalena Bajgrowicz-Cieslak, Ali K. Yetisen, Mohamed Elsherif, and Haider Butt

ACS Nano Article ASAP

Holographic image of the word 'NANO' on corn syrup film displaying rainbow colours (© Dr. Haider Butt, Khalifa University).

NFCHOLO™ Technology to Protect ID Documents

During production of, for example a plastic card, the NFCHOLO is embedded into the document as one of its layers so that it is reliably protected from replacing, tampering and forgery.

How it works

NFCHOLO combines the security features of a hologram and the benefits of a smart document. A document with NFCHOLO gets greater security and convenient contactless authentication. The technology instantly transmits information from the NFCHOLO hologram chip to an NFC-enabled device, such as a smartphone.

Special technologies allow each NFCHOLO hologram to be personalised with unique information about the document holder. The chip can record the owner's data, identification number, or other important information. When you tap a card with NFCHOLO on a smartphone or another NFC device, data is received from the holographic NFC module. The required information is immediately displayed on the screen.

VividQ Publishes Holographic Augmented Reality White Paper

In its White Paper entitled ‘Holography: The Future of Augmented Reality Wearables’, UK-based VividQ sets out why computer-generated holography represents the ultimate in display technology and ushers in a revolution in the interaction between human and machine.

VividQ is that rare hybrid of software development company with expertise in holography. The company has gathered together engineers, mathematicians and computer scientists from the three leading UK universities (Cambridge, Oxford and St Andrews) to develop patented technology for commercial applications of holographic displays in AR/VR (augmented/ virtual reality) headsets and smartglasses, automotive head-up displays, and consumer electronics.

The White Paper discusses advances in computer-generated holography (CGH) –the method for creating holograms using 3D data sources such as game engines, 3D cameras and CAD software to create the light pattern of an object without having to use the physical object itself.

In CGH, a spatial light modulator (SLM - a digital display device) is used to create the light pattern. For each object to be displayed, the set of values for each pixel in the SLM has to be calculated such that the light reflected from the pixels interferes in just the right way to form the desired holographic image.

The components of VividQ’s holographic display are the SLM, a computer platform to calculate and upload the holograms to the SLM, and a light source. In the past, the process of creating CGHs has demanded high power computing resources, meaning it has been confined to research and academic labs.

Today, however, new algorithms and software have been developed, bringing CGH to next-generation displays, such as AR headsets, using standard computing power.

According to VividQ, AR has the potential to span both the consumer and enterprise industries, from wearables and Internet of Things to cloud computing infrastructure. AR wearables have the following characteristics:

Virtual objects of scenes can be overlaid onto a real-world environment by a near-to-eye device such as a headset or smartglasses.

The ability to recognise and update the wearable’s display information based on feedback from the environment using spatial location and mapping. This could be anything from a simple gyroscope all the way up to depth-sensing cameras and full inside-out tracking.

Virtual images displayed can be anything from simple text and icons overlaid in context with the environment all the way up to highly immersive experiences where 3D virtual assets are integrated into the real world.

But its not just VividQ that is excited about the role of holography in AR wearables. According to Fleming Chuang, CTO at Coretronic – manufacturer of digital light processing technologies, ‘I see holography as having the potential to be the ultimate 3D image generator. It effectively solves VAC issues (vergence-accommodation conflict which can lead to eye fatigue and headaches) caused by traditional stereoscopic display systems. By retaining all depth information, holography allows people to see and sense images in a way that is most realistic, comfortable and natural.

‘A major benefit of holographic display is that optical aberrations can be corrected in software. This means reducing the complexity and cost of optical systems.’

‘Holography: The Future of Augmented Reality Wearables’ is available for download at https://vivid-q.com/holographywhitepaper/

New Desktop Hologram Printer from Liti Holographics

By Professor Hans I. Bjelkhagen

LitiHolographics Inc (LitiHolo) is known for the HoloKit for beginners who want to make both monochrome and colour holograms in a simple way. It comes with small RGB diode lasers and photopolymer film which needs no chemical processing.

images are sliced into unique recordings for each individual pixel on the hologram, called a ‘hogel’ or ‘hologram element’. The printer then optically encodes the hogel information with laser light onto the special hologram film.

Hologram printer details: 1x1mm hogel size

Hologram sizes up to 4"x5" 45 degree field of view (lateral) 23 view-zone images per hogel (perspective images)

Reflection holograms (white-light viewable) Hologram can have several seconds of motion as viewer moves

Sketchfab with 500,000 free models that can be used

Smartphone 3D-capture apps like Qlone Video pan-around - capture a video from which the necessary perspective images can be extracted as frames for hologram printing

3D software rendering.

LitiHolo film are photopolymer selfdeveloping plates that require no postprocessing or developing chemicals. They are available in 2" x 3" packs of 20 plates, or 4" x 5" packs of six plates.

The founder, Paul Christie, has now introduced a new product, financed through a Kickstarter project, which is a small desktop digital hologram printer. The company was able to raise almost $100,000.

With the printer it is possible to produce monochrome reflection holograms from 3D computer graphics, CAD designs, and 3D art. The 3D Hologram Printer takes multiple perspective images, captured from a camera, video footage, or rendered from a typical 3D graphics design. The

Horizontal parallax only

Uses LitiHolo photopolymer film plates.

The printer has a footprint: 21.5" x 20" x 11" and weighs 29 lbs. It is regulated under EN 60825-1:2007 and has a 20 mW red laser, wavelength 600-650 nm.

Each hologram for printing needs a simple set of perspective images, which provides the 3D viewpoints or ‘look around’ information. This can come from several sources including:

IQ Structures Help Get Holographic Designs onto the Page

Getting an initial holographic design onto the page has always been constrained by the lack of visualisation software, but now IQ Structures, a Czech research and production organisation, has launched a website that does just that.

Given the task of drafting an initial design of a hologram, a designer is faced with a multitude of questions: What visual features do you want? What optical effects should be used? In which picture element? An animal, dancer, flower or a national symbol?

From now on, government experts, card issuers and product security experts can decide on their own. On IQ Structures new web-based design platform, the Effects Gallery allows document issuers to design entire documents, including holographic effects.

‘Of course, our in-house consultants are still ready to help to finalise the project. We will analyse the situation, identify potential vulnerabilities and recommend the optimal way of protection. We always take into

account costs, production technology of the card, customisation processes and other factors,’ says Petr Franc, CEO of IQ Structures.

‘But from now, we empower document and valuables issuers, and we enable smooth cooperation across organisations and specialisations. Together, we are on the way to sophisticated exploitation of advanced technologies and safer documents.’

A customer selects from a gallery of visual effects for holograms. Descriptions of each effect include several examples of use. All effects are displayed as they appear to the naked eye. The list also includes unique effects developed by IQ Structures, based on a combination of laser, e-beam and nanoprinting.

Thanks to these effects, IQ Structures has won a range of global competitions in recent years, including several victories of Excellence in Holography (International Hologram Manufacturers Association) and Government Security Award (American Security Today).

It is also possible to use a digital camera with a camera slider or a camera rail to capture an input for holograms. The company can supply a motorised rail slider for a digital camera or a smartphone. It is also possible to order an LED spotlight hologram display for the holograms.

For more information contact: www.litiholo.com/

Contact Professor Hans I. Bjelkhagen at Hansholo Consulting Ltd. www.hansholo.com

As soon as the customer selects effects and drafts an image, experts from the IQ Structures mastering centre finalise the design and produce a hologram. IQ Structures´ experts and card issuer/ documents/valuables designers can work closely together during the entire process.

Robert Dvorak, Business Development Director in IQ Structures, added: ‘it is another milestone on our way from different sophisticated technologies to integral units focused on protection of information, and protection of identity. Our holograms of any size can be placed anywhere on the document and protect information from both sides of the card. The way from leading-edge technologies to documents highly resistant against counterfeiting is not easy, but we love every step of the way and keep walking and innovating.’

www.iqstructures.com

AuthentiBrand Takes on Cannabis Counterfeits

From its roots in commercial display holography in the 1980s, AuthentiBrand is combining holograms with QR codes to fight fake cannabis.

Peter Scheir, President of holographic solutions company AuthentiBrand, first entered commercial holography in the 1980s when he founded HoloBank, a stock image hologram repository, opening a market of affordable, short-run, fastturnaround images. That led to contracts to design artistic holograms for the likes of Pfizer, IBM, FedEx, Hewlett Packard, DuPont, Burton Snowboards, the US Army, Bausch and Lomb, and Schick. More recently, with the legalisation of cannabis in many US states, Peter and AuthentiBrand find themselves protecting the drug’s sale from fraud. ‘Adding tamperevident security holograms to cannabis manufacturer Flav’s vape carts was my first large account in the cannabis industry, and now our holograms grace millions of cannabis packages,’ he said.

Cannabis packaging, according to Peter, is tricky business. Packages must meet state regulatory requirements while at the same time maintaining a brand’s aesthetic. As with any other highly regulated product, inventory control and tamper-evidence are paramount.

All of those things can be accomplished with good holograms, Scheir said. ‘Often companies miss the importance [of using a high-quality holographic image] and use a cheap overseas twinkly pattern that’s incorrectly labelled a hologram,’ he explained, adding that the holograms AuthentiBrand produces are cutting-edge, with overt (visible to the unaided eye) and covert (viewable only with lenses, lasers, or other instruments) elements.

‘When cannabis is finally made federally legal, brands will face new regulations for authentication, tracking, and tamperevident labelling,’ he continued. ‘Holograms already are globally recognised as the regulatory standard for visual authentication on many official identification documents such as passports and state ID cards.’

Another offering is short production runs. With HoloShield® and QR Manager®, the company offers as few as 500 customised and QR-coded hologram labels for next day delivery.

‘We develop affordable, comprehensive strategies for seed-to-sale tracking, authentication, marketing, and promotions. We inventory hundreds of thousands of proprietary holograms and offer fast turnaround times on customised orders,

while scaling up quickly for high-volume and fully custom projects.’

Scheir developed this part of AuthentiBrand’s business in 2017. Patentpending QR Manager allows users to create and use unique, serialised QR codes for multiple purposes, including inventory tracking and authentication.

The system also facilitates microtargeted marketing and consumer interaction and collects data as desired. QR Manager works with or without AuthentiBrand’s holograms.

A growing number of US states have adopted packaging regulations requiring a QR code on all medical cannabis products; scanning the code must display certified laboratory testing results (often called certificates of analysis or COAs). With a single label, QR Manager can help multistate operators comply with such regulations in all states.

‘QR Manager requires no special app,’ Scheir said. ‘Customers can scan the QR from almost any mobile device. Instantly, you’ve drawn them from the package into their familiar digital world, where you can learn their desires and direct them to helpful information.’

Annual subscription rate: £604 plus postage Subscribers to Authentication News, Tax Stamp & Traceability News or ID & Secure Document News: 20% discount. Government agencies: special conditions available. Ask about multiple/corporate subscriptions.

The editorial team welcomes your news, contributions and comments. Please send these to publications@recon-intl.com

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Tensor Holography – 3D Imagery on a Smartphone

Is Medical Holography a Market, or a Group of Applications?

It seems that each month, Holography News™ covers stories about interesting applications for holography in medical imaging. But is this just a set of unconnected research or is there a real market for heightened reality imaging in the fields of surgery, training and diagnosis? A report from Brand Essence attempts to put the record straight.

A new method called tensor holography could enable the creation of holograms for virtual reality, 3D printing and medical imaging that can run on a smartphone. Daniel Ackerman, writing in MIT News, explains how.

Despite years of development and commercial push, virtual reality (VR) headsets have yet to supersede TVs or computer monitors as the preferred screen for viewing moving images. One reason could be that VR can make users feel sick. Nausea and eye strain can result because VR creates an illusion of 3D viewing although the user is in fact staring at a fixed-distance 2D display – an issue referred to as vergence-accommodation conflict (see HN March 2021).

The solution for better 3D visualisation could lie in remaking holograms for the digital age – which would allow people to see and sense images in a way that is most realistic, comfortable and natural. Holograms offer a shifting perspective of the recorded world based on the viewer's position, and they allow the eye to

adjust focal depth to alternately focus on foreground and background.

Researchers have long sought to make computer-generated holograms, but the process has traditionally required a supercomputer to churn through mathematical simulations, which is time-consuming and can yield lessthan-photorealistic results. Now, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) researchers have developed a new way to produce holograms almost instantly -- and the deep learning-based method is so efficient that it can run on a laptop in almost real-time, the researchers say.

‘People previously thought that with existing consumer-grade hardware, it was impossible to do real-time 3D holography computations,’ says Liang Shi, the study's lead author and a PhD student in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). ‘It's often been said that commercially available holographic displays will be around in 10 years, yet this statement has been around for decades.’

According to the Global Medical Holography Market, the market was valued at $385.3 million in 2018 and is expected to reach $2.7 billion by 2025, resulting in a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32.18% over the forecast period.

The main benefit of viewing holograms in the area of medical imaging seems to be its ability to reduce the invasive nature of complex physical procedures and to help detect problems in organs such as the heart or the brain.

The immersive nature of the 3D technology removes viewing constraints from surgeons, trainees and other medical professionals so that they can look around tissue and other material that are obscuring their line-of-sight to the object of interest.

Apple’s Patent Interest in Holography

A US patent recently granted to tech giant Apple shows how cameras on the augmented reality wearable, Apple Glass, could record the real world around the wearer and then use that information to create holograms. The patent also focuses on ensuring that cameras and holograms would not disrupt the wearer’s view.

Readers of Holography News will know that Apple’s pipeline of applications and granted patents for displaying information on Apple Glass has a strong emphasis on holographic and 3D imagery.

Continuing that interest, US Patent 10,955,677 describes how two ‘scene cameras’ (shown in the figure below) could capture the real world and locate specific points of reference. These images are analysed by the ‘controller’, which can adjust what the wearer sees virtually based on where they are looking in real life. The ‘light engine’ is a projector that will display holograms on the lens based on all of those inputs.

The aim of the invention, according to the patent, is to make wearers feel as if they were physically in the environment.

‘For example, virtual reality systems may display stereoscopic scenes to users in order to create an illusion of depth,’ says the patent, ‘and a computer may adjust the scene content in real-time to provide the illusion of the user moving within the scene.’

‘When the user views images through a virtual reality system, the user may thus feel as if they are moving within the scenes from a first-person point of view,’ it continues. ‘Mixed reality (MR) covers a spectrum from augmented reality (AR) systems that combine computer generated information (referred to as virtual content) with views of the real world to augment, or add virtual content to, a user's view of their real environment.’

The two inventors named on the Apple patent are UK-based Richard J Topliss and Michael David Simmonds, whose abstract for the patent reads ‘Point to point transmission holograms are used to provide a scene camera for an augmented reality glasses display system. A glass or plastic substrate acts as spectacle style lens. A holographic medium is applied to a surface of the substrate, within which is recorded a series of point-to-point transmission

holograms. The construction points of the holograms are arranged at the eye and at the pupil of a camera placed, ideally, to the temple side of the user's eye. The recorded transmission holograms act by diffracting a portion of the light from the scene surrounding the user that is heading for the user's eye towards the scene camera. The hologram efficiency is balanced so that the user is still able to see the surrounding scene. The perspective of the view seen by the scene camera is substantially identical to that seen by the user through the lens.’

Apple goes on to explain that to achieve a more accurate representation of the perspective of the user, the scene camera is located on the side of the MR headset and facing the inside surface of the lens.

The lens includes a holographic medium recorded with one or more transmission holograms that diffract a portion of the light from the scene that is directed to the user's eye to the scene camera. Thus, the scene camera captures images of the environment from substantially the same perspective as the user's eye.

1 and 8 from Apple patent 10,955,677 (© Patently Apple).

Figures

in Brief

Bringing Holographic Plates up to Standard

Anyone, like me, who has had to learn how to use a glass cutter in the dark to cut down 10” x 8” plates into smaller 5”x4” versions may be interested in learning about work underway for the creation of a new standard for glass plates sizes used in photography, which also covers holographic glass plates.

Alan Hodgson, a regular contributor to Holography News™, who leads the UK team in this endeavour, has this to say about the standard: ‘we are updating ISO 14548 Photography – Dimensions of glass plates, to take into account some modern manufacture. Here is your chance to read the work for free and I would really welcome your comments through the BSI portal at https://standardsdevelopment.bsigroup. com/projects/2021-00138#/section. Please feel free to pass this on as appropriate. Comments need to be in by 12 May.’

The document specifies the nominal sizes of photographic glass plates, together with cutting dimensions and their tolerances. It also specifies the nominal substrate thicknesses and their tolerances, as well as providing a cross-reference for sheet films being used in newly manufactured holders for 19th century glass plate cameras.

If you have not used this system before, you will need to register https://identity. bsigroup.com/StdDevRegistration/ Register?bpurl=https:// standardsdevelopment.bsigroup.com/

But Prof Cox is not alone in being attracted to the holographic universe theory. Working with Belgian colleague Prof Thomas Hertog, Prof Stephen Hawking (theoretical physicist and cosmologist who passed away in 2018) extended the notion of a holographic reality to explain how the universe came into being from the moment of the Big Bang.

His theory embraced the concept that the universe is like a vast and complex hologram. In other words, 3D reality is an illusion, and that the apparently ‘solid’ world around us – and the dimension of time – is projected from information stored on a flat 2D surface.

Prof Hawkins was known to be dissatisfied by the inflation theory of cosmology – that for a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang, the universe expanded incredibly rapidly before settling into its present state, filled with stars and galaxies. He was equally unsure about one of the possible consequences of the inflation theory that there are, in fact, concurrently a number of different universes each with their own laws of physics.

Prof Hawking was said to have been troubled by this idea as it cannot be reconciled with Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. Hawking and Hertog's variation of the holography theory overcomes the problem of combining eternal inflation with General Relativity.

Its hard to decipher where physics ends and philosophy starts in discussions of this type, but isn’t that what makes it even more intriguing?

Philips' SmartCT 3D Imaging Software Gets FDA Clearance

The tablet can be brought directly into the procedure room and connected to a larger monitor there, allowing for more timely and effective diagnosis and treatment of conditions requiring interventional radiology procedures such as aneurysms, liver tumours and vascular diseases.

‘Philips SmartCT is a major step forward in 3D imaging, enhancing confidence in the interventional suite and supporting key elements of the quadruple aim of better patient outcomes, enhanced patient and staff experiences and lower cost of care,’ Ronald Tabaksblat, Philips’ General Manager of Image-Guided Therapy Systems, said.

K Laser Expands Sales Support Team

Established in 1988, K Laser Technology has been a leader in optical hologram origination, hologram embossing and the material deposition process. It is a major supplier of lamination film, transfer film, hot stamping foil, cold foil, laminated paper, and eco-paperboard. Product applications include packaging, label, decoration, security and many more.

Specialising in holographic and Fresnel lens technologies, K Laser currently has eight manufacturing sites and 11 sales offices worldwide. Now, K Laser Technology (USA) has expanded its sales support team with the appointment of Brandy Morgan to the account management team.

Morgan will serve as the point of contact for the sales team within the Latin American market, assisting in strengthening customer relationships and expanding K Laser’s support coverage.

Prof Brian Cox, University of Manchester (UK), recently stunned breakfast time TV viewers in the UK by sharing a hypothesis that, after studying the origins of the universe and black holes, we might be holograms.

Bear in mind that Prof Cox was promoting his upcoming tour and so might have been seeking some newsworthy soundbites, but using holography as a model to simplify the relation between the physical world and consciousness is not new. The Holographic Universe (Harper Collins, 1996) was just one in a series of articles and books that took principles of holography, such as 3D-wavefront reconstruction (phase and amplitude) from a 2D surface, to help model the complex relation between matter and mind.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given 510(k) clearance to medical imaging and therapeutics multinational Philips’ new three-dimensional imaging software – SmartCT.

Philips unveiled the software in September 2020 alongside the relaunch of its Azurion image-guided therapy platform. Within the Azurion system, SmartCT guides clinicians through the acquisition and analysis of 3D imaging data collected via angiography, neurology, soft-tissue imaging and guidewire navigation.

Clinicians manipulate and measure the CT-like scans on a touchscreen tablet. Uses for the 3D technology include isolating specific blood vessels, tracking an inserted catheter from multiple angles and erasing structures blocking the area of focus, and capturing and storing images throughout each process.

‘The Universe is Like a Hologram’ is not the Same as ‘the Universe is a Hologram’

K Laser new recruit Brandy Morgan (© K Laser).

Is Medical Holography a Market, or a Group of Applications?

The rise in the use of medical holography is strongly linked to the recent proliferation of 3D data from CT (computer tomography), MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and ultrasound scanners. The increased availability of 3D content is driving the development of 3D medical holography as a means of displaying the data in a more intuitive manner than via a high-resolution monitor, for instance.

The list of companies included as key players in the report include companies that come from an interactive 3D digital display background such as Zebra Imaging and those, like Phase Holographic Imaging, that manufacture biological and medical imaging equipment. One of the inhibitors to the growth of the market foreseen by the report is the increased demand on facility managers that will be required to handle this type of technology.

Regional analysis

The rising prevalence of cardiovascular disease is seen as a major factor in driving the growth of the global medical holography market. It seems that medical holograms are particularly useful in radiology settings as they provide improved performance over traditional medical images. This may be one reason why Asia-Pacific is emerging as a fast-growing region for the medical holography market owing to the rapid development of new medical imaging technologies and rising incidences of cardiovascular disease in the region. But North America is expected to dominate the global medical holography market due to the extensive research and development activities in the biological field, the high spending of US-based medical companies on holography products, as well as rising adoption of advanced holographic techniques in this region. Numerous companies are focused completely on medical technologies and have made significant investments in the field of medical holography.

Tensor Holography

Shi believes the new approach, which the team calls ‘tensor holography,’ will finally bring that elusive 10-year goal within reach. The advance could fuel a spillover of holography into fields like VR and 3D printing.

Shi worked on the study, published in Nature, with his advisor and co-author Wojciech Matusik. Other co-authors include Beichen Li of EECS and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, as well as former MIT researchers Changil Kim (now at Facebook) and Petr Kellnhofer (now at Stanford University).

The quest for better 3D

A typical lens-based photograph encodes the brightness of each light wave – a photo can faithfully reproduce a scene's colours, but it ultimately yields a flat image. In contrast, a hologram encodes both the brightness and phase of each light wave. Anyone reading this who has recorded an optical hologram will appreciate the technical challenges involved, whereas computer-generated holography sidesteps these challenges by simulating the optical setup. But the process can be a computational slog.

‘Because each point in the scene has a different depth, you can't apply the same operations for all of them,’ says Shi. ‘That increases the complexity significantly.’

Directing a clustered supercomputer to run these physics-based simulations could take seconds or minutes for a single holographic image. Plus, existing algorithms don't model occlusion with photorealistic precision. Occlusion is a strong visual depth cue: objects closer to the viewer block, or occlude, objects that are more distant along the line of sight. So, Shi's team took a different approach: letting the computer teach physics to itself.

They used deep learning to accelerate computer-generated holography, allowing for real-time hologram generation. The team designed a convolutional neural network – a processing technique that uses an array of functions that can be trained to change (a tensor) so that they can roughly mimic how humans process visual information. Training a neural network typically requires a large, high-quality dataset, which didn't previously exist for 3D holograms.

The team built a custom database of 4,000 pairs of computer-generated images. Each pair matched a picture – including colour and depth information for each pixel – with its corresponding hologram.

To create the holograms in the new database, the researchers used scenes with complex and variable shapes and colours, with the depth of pixels distributed evenly from the background to the foreground, and with a new set of physicsbased calculations to handle occlusion. That approach resulted in photorealistic training data.

Next, the algorithm got to work.

By learning from each image pair, the tensor network tweaked the parameters of its own calculations, successively enhancing its ability to create holograms. The fully optimised network operated orders of magnitude faster than physics-based calculations. That efficiency surprised the team itself.

‘We are amazed at how well it performs,’ says Matusik. Within milliseconds, tensor holography can craft holograms from images with depth information – which is provided by typical computer-generated images and can be calculated from a multicamera setup or LiDAR sensor (both are standard on some new smartphones).

This advance paves the way for real-time 3D holography. What's more, the compact tensor network requires less than 1 MB of memory. ‘It's negligible, considering the tens of gigabytes available on the latest cell phone’, he says.

A considerable leap

Real-time 3D holography would enhance a slew of systems, from VR to 3D printing. The team says the new system could help immerse VR viewers in more realistic scenery, while eliminating eye strain and other side effects of long-term VR use. The technology could be deployed on displays that modulate the phase of light waves. Currently, most affordable consumer-grade displays modulate only brightness, though the cost of phase-modulating displays would fall if widely adopted.

Three-dimensional holography could also boost the development of volumetric 3D printing, the researchers say. This technology could prove faster and more precise than traditional layer-by-layer 3D printing, since volumetric 3D printing allows for the simultaneous projection of the entire 3D pattern.

Other applications include microscopy, visualisation of medical data, and the design of surfaces with unique optical properties.

New Photochromic Materials Could Have Applications in Holography

Photochromic materials are characterised by a reversible change in their colour induced, at least in one direction, by light of a specific wavelength. These light-activated materials have, for some time, been of interest to holographers, thanks to their ability to reversibly change transparency in the visible (amplitude holography) and their refractive index in the near infrared region (phase holography).

However, to date photochromic materials have been made from organic compounds that are expensive to synthesise. But now scientists from Ritsumeikan University, Japan, have discovered fast-switching photochromism in an inexpensive inorganic material: copper-doped zinc sulfide nanocrystals. Their results pave the way for a plethora of potential applications ranging from holographic storage to anticounterfeiting devices.

Some of us will be familiar with office building windows that adaptively darken according to the intensity of sunlight while others may use spectacles that turn into sunglasses under the sun and switch back to regular glasses when you enter a building. These changes are possible thanks to photochromic materials, whose optical (and other) properties change radically when irradiated by visible or ultraviolet light. Today, virtually all fast-switching photochromic materials are made using organic compounds. Unfortunately, this makes them expensive and complicated to synthesise, requiring multi-step processes that are difficult to scale up for mass production. So, despite the myriad of potential applications these materials could enable, their commercial application has been limited.

Finding fast-switching inorganic photochromic materials, which could make those potential applications widely commercially possible, has proven challenging. However, a new study published in the ‘Journal of the American Chemical Society’ brings new hope.

In this study, scientists from Ritsumeikan University, led by Yoichi Kobayashi, discovered that zinc sulfide (ZnS) nanocrystals doped with copper (Cu) ions have peculiar photochromic properties. When irradiated by UV and visible light, they turn from creamy white to dark grey. What's especially interesting is that when the radiation source is turned off, it takes around a full minute for the material to revert to its original creamy white colour in air, but it does so in a matter of microseconds when submerged in aqueous solutions.

The team theoretically and experimentally analysed this material to help clarify the reason for this never-before-seen photochromatic behaviour.

The answer, as the scientists proved, has much to do with the dynamics of photoexcited charge carriers. When a photon (a packet of light) hits a material, the collision can energise electrons and cause them to leave their otherwise stable positions in their atomic orbitals. The absence of the electron means that a negative charge has been lost, which leaves a localised positive charge. In solid-state physics this is referred to as a 'hole’.

In most materials, the electron-hole pair exists for a very short time before cancelling each other out, re-emitting a fraction of the energy that the electron originally obtained. However, in Cu-doped ZnS, the picture is very different. Holes are effectively trapped by Cu ions - which are the Cu atoms that have lost an electron - while photoexcited electrons can freely hop to other atoms, and these effects delay the recombination process. As the team demonstrated, the long-lived holes alter the optical properties of the material, causing the observed photochromatic effect.

The discovery of the first inorganic nanocrystal to exhibit fast-switching photochromism represents much-needed progress in this field, especially for practical applications. ‘Zinc sulfide is relatively nontoxic and can be easily synthesized at low cost,’ says Kobayashi. ‘We believe our research will lead to the widespread use of fast-response photochromic materials in society.’

Examples of notable applications for such photochromic materials include 3-D television, smart glasses, windows for vehicles and houses, and even highspeed holographic storage and anticounterfeiting devices for protecting brands and medicines.

In addition, this study has implications for researchers who are willing to dig deeper into other areas of applied optical physics. In this regard, Kobayashi remarks: ‘we have demonstrated that the photochromic reaction of nanomaterials can be tuned by controlling the lifetime of photoexcited carriers. Exploring novel nanomaterials with ultralong-lived excited carriers is important, not only for photochromic materials, but also for advanced photo-functional materials such as luminescent materials and photocatalysts.’

Writing in 3D

Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have devised and implemented a simplified algorithm for turning freely drawn lines into holograms on a standard desktop computer.

The algorithm dramatically cuts down the computational cost and power consumption of algorithms that require dedicated hardware. It is fast enough to convert writing into lines in real-time, and makes crisp, clear images. Potential applications include hand-written remote instructions superimposed on landscapes and workbenches.

One of the major drawbacks of computer-generated-holography is the computational load required to calculate the amplitude and phase of wavefronts.

For the kind of quality we've come to expect from 2D displays to be achieved in 3D requires supercomputing levels of number crunching.

There is also the issue of power consumption. More widely available hardware like the graphics processing units (GPUs) in gaming rigs might be able to overcome some of these issues with raw power, but the amount of electricity they use is a major impediment to mobile applications.

A key solution is to limit the kind of images that are projected. Now, a team led by Assistant Professor Takashi Nishitsuji have proposed and implemented a solution with impressive performance.

They specifically chose to exclusively draw lines in 3D space. Though this may sound drastic at first, the number of things you can do is still impressive. In a particularly elegant implementation, they connected a tablet to a PC and conventional hologram generation hardware, ie. a laser and a spatial light modulator. Their algorithm is fast enough that handwriting on the tablet could be converted to images in real-time. The PC they used was a standard desktop with no GPU, significantly expanding where it might be implemented. Though the images were slightly inferior in quality to other, more computationally intensive methods, the sharpness of the writing comfortably met industry standards.

The team is especially focused on implementations in head-up displays (HUDs) in helmets and cars, where navigation instructions might be displayed on the landscape instead of voice instructions or distracting screens.

https://techxplore.com/news/2021-03doodles-real-holograms-home.html

A Review of SPIE Practical Holography XXXV: Displays, Materials and Applications

Holography News® asked Professor Hans Bjelkhagen to review this important international event in the field of holographic applications and recording materials.

The Practical Holography digital conference this year was part of the SPIE Photonics West event. It took place 10 March 2021. The conference provides a venue for all aspects of holography: art, display, metrology, scientific, security, storage, materials and processes, CGHs and HOEs. The conference normally brings together participants from all over the world. This year it is not clear how many were able to take part and listen to the recorded video presentations.

The holography conference is normally chaired by Hans Bjelkhagen, Glyndŵr University (UK) and takes place in San Francisco. This year’s conference (as always) featured long-time participants and new members of the Practical Holography community sharing many novel and interesting contributions in various holographic fields during one day of video presentations and a poster session. The presentations were divided into three main sessions: Materials and Processes, Applications of Display and Art Holography, and Digital and ComputerGenerated Holography. There was also a Poster Session.

In the session on recording materials Friedrich-Karl Bruder, Covestro (Germany), described how the Bayfol® HX photopolymer films prove themselves as easy-to-process recording materials for volume holographic optical elements (vHOEs). Their full-colour (RGB) recording and replay capabilities are two of their major advantages. Moreover, the adjustable diffraction efficiency, tuneable angular and spectral selectivity of vHOEs as well as their unmatched optical clarity enables superior invisible ‘off Bragg’ optical functionality.

Bayfol HX has made its way in applications in the field of VR and AR such as headup displays (HUD) and head-mounted displays (HMD), in free-space combiners, in plastic optical waveguides, and in transparent screens.

Covestro has been able to reach an index modulation (Δn) of 0.07 for visible laser wavelengths. Another achievement was sensitisation of the photopolymer material into the Near Infrared Region (NIR) with an index modulation (Δn) of 0.045.

Another presentation in the same session was by Jonas Strobelt, Beuth Hochschule für Technik (Germany), who described an experiment carried out in the USA at The College of New Jersey, USA.

It was shown that supramolecular azopolymer thin films are a promising material for the one-step fabrication of optical microstructures such as dot-matrix holograms. The films were fabricated using commercially available azobenzene and polymeric components and were spin-coated on glass. The gratings were recorded using two-beam interference at 488 nm with 2.5 mw optical power and exposure times under 10 s. The gratings appear immediately, require no postexposure processing and their amplitude can be precisely controlled via exposure time. The dot matrix structures are stable in ambient conditions.

In the Display and Art Holography Session, Theresa McGovern, Cobolt AB, Sweden, and HÜBNER GmbH & Co. KG (Germany) gave an update on their lasers. She presented the extremely reliable, Cobolt single-frequency or single-longitudinalmode (SLM) lasers in the visible spectrum with long coherence length, excellent wavelength stability and accuracy, and high, stable output powers. These lasers undergo various long-term tests before they are delivered.

The main new product was the laser combiner C-FLEX C8Cobolt 05-IE RGB lasers. These generate a ‘white’ laser beam for colour HOEs and colour holography that provides the necessary performance per laser line with robust beam alignment stability during exposure, and repeatability between exposures, which requires strict control of opto-mechanical component design and thermal management. The C-FLEX can be used to combine up to four laser lines, collinearly.

Maria Isabel Azevedo, University de Aveiro (Portugal), had been working on digitally printed art colour holograms, which she describes as holographic performance art. There is an interaction between the viewer and the hologram. A relationship is established between the real space, in which the participant moves, and the virtual space of the digital hologram.

Allyson Park, University of California, Berkeley (USA), described a holographic microscope based on the in-line Gabor technique. It was for plankton studies, where the main focus was on evaluating different auto-focusing metrics and reconstruction techniques to obtain highest quality images.

Another paper which described holographic recording of plankton was by Victor Dyomin, National Research Tomsk State University (Russia). The approach was to calibrate and analyse the imaging properties of a submersible digital holographic camera designed to study plankton in its habitat. Holograms from Arctic mission recordings in Kara Sea and Laptev Sea were described with detailed measurements of the recorded holograms.

Angika Bulbul, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel) described DOE experiments with imaging with partial apertures, suitable for applications where compact, lightweight, and cost-effective optical systems such as the partial aperture imaging system (PAIS).

The concept of PAIS is based on the interference-less coded aperture correlation holography (I-COACH) technique. Since I-COACH is an incoherent and interferenceless technique, it is compatible with telescopic applications. The results of the modified PAIS (M-PAIS) were reconstructed by a nonlinear correlation to provide wellresolved images which are compared with full aperture direct imaging results. The results are relevant for future space and ground-based telescopic systems. There were several papers on digital hologram printers in the Digital and Computer-Generated Holography session.

Philippe Gentet, Kwangwoon University (South Korea, compared the same test object first recorded as an analogue colour (RGB) Denisyuk hologram. The object was then scanned with the in-house cylindrical designed scanner to be printed on the digital CHIMERA hologram printer. The ULTIMATE 04 silver halide material was used for both techniques. He discussed advantages and disadvantages between the two techniques.

Munkh-Uchral Erdenebat, Chungbuk National University (South Korea) introduced a fully automatic high-resolution light field image acquisition system using onedirectional moving camera array and smart motor-driven stage. The system is used for a holographic stereogram printing system to record monochrome holograms on Covestro photopolymer material.

The SPIE Holography Technical Evening Event did not take place this year.

Hopefully, next year PhotonicsWest will be back to normal.

Diffracting and Reflecting Light – A Potent Combination for Protecting Banknotes

In this occasional series of features of optical anti-counterfeiting devices on secure documents, we take a look at two recently issued banknotes that use colour and position changes as key first level deterrent features.

The Central Bank of Azerbaijan is in the course of upgrading its banknote series with state-of-the-art security features and has recently issued new 1, 5 and 50 manat notes.

The theme of the renewed 50 manat banknote is ‘Education and the Future’, which is part of the existing concept of the nation’s progress in strengthening the brand of ‘Independent Azerbaijan’. In particular, the note celebrates the importance of education and the progress being made – which is creatively demonstrated with young schoolchildren to the left of the note, progressing to univeristy students to the right. This imagery is also encapsulated in advanced and dynamic security features.

Fig 2: Animate-effect (© Louisenthal).

On the left side of the note in figure 1 is an image of younger students that provide dynamic light effects through SPARK® Live. The ‘sand dune’ effect changes size and colour, from gold to green, when the banknote is tilted, matching the colour effects of the stripe.

On the back of the note is a RollingStar security thread featuring AMB and 50. Again, the colour of this shifts from gold to green.

Last but not least, the watermark shows the national coat of arms and denomination when held up to the light.

Celebrating innovation

On 25 March 2021, the Bank of England unveiled the design for the new £50 which, when it goes into circulation in June, will compete the transition to a new allpolymer series.

On the front, at the top of the stripe, is the royal crown expressed in a 3D relief effect, whereby the crown seems to be protruding from the surface, while in fact it is an optical effect, being completely flat to the touch. Behind the crown are individual dynamic colors. At the bottom of the stripe the words ‘Fifty’ and ‘Pounds’ flip between one word and the other as the note is tilted.

The middle of the foil stripe contains an image of a microchip, and of a sunflower, reflecting Turing’s work on computing, and on his interest in the mathematics of organic growth. To the left is a portrait of the Queen, viewable from either side of the note.

Fig 3: £50 back (© Bank of England).

Fig 1: Front of the 50 manat (© Central Bank of Azerbaijan).

Perhaps the most pronounced of these security features is the RollingStar® LEAD ‘Mix’ from Louisenthal. This foil incorporates micromirror features, state-of-the-art holograms, colour shift thin film technology, 3D flip and dynamic effects.

At the top of the foil stripe shown to the right of the front of the note in figure 1, a metallic surface relief motif ‘flip’ effect, created with micromirrors, alternates between the denomination numeral and the manat symbol. Underneath that, the stairs are depicted in a holographic and micromirror spectrum display the Bank’s ‘AMB’ signage and the number 50.

But perhaps the most eye-catching feature within the stripe is the animated image of a person walking, the detailed movements of which, shown in figure 2, can be seen at the bottom of the foil stripe when the note is tilted. In this animated effect, the person appears to walk while at the same time the colour also changes from green-to-gold.

The mathematician Alan Turing, known as the father of modern computing, was chosen for the £50 following the Bank’s character selection process. The main design and security features of the £50 are centred on Turing’s life and work and shown in figure 3. In addition to his portrait, the note includes a table and mathematical formulae from his seminal 1936 paper ‘On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem’, which introduced the concept of a Turing machine as a thought experiment of how computers could operate and is widely recognised as being at the foundation of computer science.

The images also include Turing’s Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) Pilot Machine, one of the first electronically stored-program digital computers, and a ticker tape depicting his birth date in binary code.

Perhaps the most striking feature is the large see-through window and colour foil stripe, which is shown to its best on the smooth polymer surface. The stripe – based on KINEGRAM Colors® from KURZ – comes in green, gold and metallic colours on the front (see figure 4), and red and silver on the back, visible through the clear window.

Fig 4: £50 front (© Bank of England).

In addition to the main window, there is a smaller see-through window in the bottom corner of the note, the shape of which is based on architectural features at Bletchley Park, the wartime intelligence centre where Turing’s work cracking the codes of the Enigma machine is credited with saving millions of lives by bringing World War II to an earlier end.

The new £50 was designed by the Bank’s in-house designer, Debbie Marriott, in conjunction with De La Rue and the various feature suppliers. It was printed by De La Rue, while supply of the polymer substrate is divided between CCL Secure’s Guardian® and De La Rue’s SAFEGUARD®

In tribute to the legendary mathematician and codebreaker, the UK intelligence agency GCHQ has set a series of puzzles linked to the note. The brain teasers pick out various symbols, signs, and drawings on the banknote and, according to GCHQ, the 12 riddles in its so-called Turing Challenge should take experienced solvers around seven hours to complete from start to finish.

Holograms Help to Study Plankton and Ecology

Unlike photography, which records light wave intensity arriving on a recording surface, holography can record and replay information about what the wave has passed through on its journey to the recording surface. Now scientists are planning to use this to study small particles and organisms in underwater environments.

Now TSU radiophysicists are engaged in holography of marine particles. It can be plankton, gas bubbles, oil droplets – any objects that are in the water.

The main tool used by the team is a digital holographic camera, which, placed in the water, can determine the size and shape of plankton and other particles, their speed, the number of individuals, and other parameters.

Conclusions about the state of the reservoir of water and its biological diversity can be drawn from the data obtained.

How it works

Scientists from the Laboratory of Radiophysical and Optical Methods for Studying the Environment (TSU Faculty of Radiophysics, Siberia) have found a way to determine the pollution of water bodies by studying plankton. Optical holography makes it possible to study particles of various origins in different media – aerosols, cloud particles, inhomogeneities in optical crystals, glasses, erythrocytes, and others.

A beam of visible light is directed from a laser source and is expanded to form a wide uniform beam that passes through a volume of water containing particles. The light scattered by the particles becomes the object wave, which carries information about these particles, while the unscattered light is the reference wave. The two waves, object and reference, set up an interference pattern which is recorded on a CCD (charged-couple device) camera as a hologram. In subsequent playback of the hologram, removal of the reference wave leaves the information-carrying object wave intact for examination.

Underwater, along with a digital holographic camera, additional sensors are usually installed, providing measurements on temperature, pressure, and conductivity. The more information about the habitat is obtained, the more specific conclusions can be drawn and the more comprehensively the problem can be investigated.

Usually, the study of plankton takes place away from its habitat. Biologists throw a special net into the water to collect plankton from within a layer, from say 100-150 metres. So, plankton is investigated not at a specific point, but in this 50-metre layer, giving a generalised result. But the digital holographic camera can study plankton in its habitat and determine where the measurements are taken.

Earlier this year, scientists from the research team joined an international expedition onboard the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh vessel in the Kara, East Siberian, and Laptev seas. They collected a large number of digital holograms, via a fibre optic cable that transmitted the data to the ship in real-time, that they will study alongside data from future expeditions.

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Commercial Holography at virtual.drupa

IHMA Refines Glossary of Holograms

The International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA) is made up of 80 of the world’s leading hologram companies who cooperate to maintain the highest professional, security and quality standards in support of their customers.

The IHMA’s website (ihma.org) is a great resource for members and clients alike to dip into features such as the IHMA’s activities in international standards, holography-related press releases and access to the Hologram Image Register (HIR) which is a secure registry of holographic images, established by the IHMA to safeguard hologram copyright and underpin the use of holograms in authentication and security printing.

drupa is the largest printing equipment exhibition in the world, held every four years by Messe Düsseldorf in Düsseldorf, Germany. For many years, it has been a popular meeting place for the commercial holography industry, but its recent history has been heavily impacted by COVID.

The most recent physical meeting of drupa was in 2016. The drupa scheduled for 2020 was postponed to 2021, due to the pandemic. But after consultation with exhibitors and partners, the organisers decided to replace a physical tradeshow with ‘virtual.drupa’, a four-day digital event. The dates fell within the period originally planned for drupa: 20-23 April 2021.

The virtual event attracted 212 exhibitors from 35 countries, as well as team participants from global subsidiaries presenting their product portfolios and innovations within the online showrooms and more than 125 live web sessions with an average of 140 participants.

Amongst the well-known companies listed under the ‘holographic foils’ product category Dragon Foils Limited from Foshan, China featured prominently.

Established in 2006, Dragon Foils is a subsidiary of Guangdong Ruian Group, which is a national high-tech enterprise in China. Covering an area of 70,000m², the company’s manufacturing facility is a short drive from Hong Kong.

With its own R&D team, Dragon Foils has developed a long-term and close cooperation with the South China University of Technology resulting in their own range of cold foils and digital enhancement foils.

Under the security printing category of the trade show, Iscent Oy from Finland boasts a set of strong environmental credentials with its claims of generating no wastewater and using no chemicals. no solvents and no Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in its manufacturing processes.

The IHMA has now updated the Glossary of Holograms on the website to reflect advances in the industry and the expanded use of holographic terms in heightened reality displays. This is just one of the site upgrades since its makeover at the beginning of 2021 (see HN January 2021).

The glossary is a live document so if you would like to add to terms described on the list, please contact serge@reconintl.com.

virtual.drupa (© Messe Düsseldorf).

Normal Service Resumed

After several months of a COVID-enforced digital only publication of Holography News™, Reconnaissance is happy to announce the resumption of the hard-copy distribution of the newsletter from June. Thank you for your patience during the disruption and we ask a little more forbearance as delivery services attempt to return to something like their pre-COVID levels.

As a consequence of the return to printed copies, standard subscribers to Holography News will no longer have access to the electronic version of the title.

If you wish to continue receiving Holography News electronically, you can upgrade your subscription to a corporate level, and continue enjoying the pdf version of the newsletter. Contact us at publications@reconintl.com for prices and to upgrade.

An Eye on the Past with a Foot in the Future

By Francis Tuffy – Editor

In her interview with Holography News™ (see HN March 2021) Linda Law, Executive Director of the HoloCenter in New York and the Founder of the Virtual Museum of Holography, promised a monthly series of online seminars based around different holographic themes. The first of these took place on 11 May and tackled the perennial question of ‘What is a Hologram?’

The on-line seminar took the form of a free-flowing conversation between a who’swho of pioneers in optical (and other wave types) holography.

In 1964, Dr. Juris Upatnieks demonstrated, with Emmett Leith, the first threedimensional holograms in the United States and together with Leith published a series of technical papers from 1962 to 1964.

Dr Kenneth Haines was a researcher at the University of Michigan and pioneered mass production techniques at American Banknote Inc. He founded Simian Inc. where he developed systems for generating holograms from computer graphics for mass production.

Posy Jackson founded The Museum of Holography in 1976, serving as its Director through to 1983. From 1987 to 1998 she created and directed the Holography Program for The Shearwater Foundation, which continued until 2004.

Dr Jim Trolinger is an optical physicist who has spent most of his working life in applied holography. During his career he co-founded Spectron Development Laboratories Inc, which was acquired by the Titan Corporation in 1986, and MetroLaser Inc, where he has worked since 1988. The starting point for the seminar was that the definition of a hologram has been shifting and we are being told by various manufacturers that Pepper's Ghost displays, volumetric displays, lenticular displays, multi-view auto-stereoscopic video displays, and Light Field Displays (to name some of them) are holograms. The question then is what is truly holographic, what is clearly not a hologram, and when does a digital dimensional image become a hologram?

The conversation was moderated by Linda, who allowed each of the panellists to give their own definition of what a hologram is. After each of the science practitioners illustrated a technical definition of

holography from their own experience. Posy captured the essence of the discussion by her observation that the technical definition of holography as wavefront reconstruction maintaining its phase and amplitude information was ‘serviceable’ but that artists will ‘pick and choose what they understand and go about their business making threedimensional images, regardless of what the proper definition is’.

Linda kept the temperature of the discussions bubbling along by interjecting comments and questions from the online audience. During this part of the discussion some misunderstandings about the behaviour of holograms were addressed (and debunked), such as the misconception that each portion of a hologram contains as much information about the recorded scene as the whole hologram.

What became clear during the event was the spirit of collaboration between artists, engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs that accelerated the technology from laboratory to gallery and then to mass commercialisation within 20 years.

I’m not sure whether the event decided on a definition that all participants could completely sign up to but Jim’s comment that ‘if it looks like a hologram and reconstructs wavefronts like a hologram then it’s a hologram!’ came close.

This was the first of three seminars on the subject of ‘What is a Hologram?’. The next seminar scheduled for 15 June will be asking the same question of a panel of holographic artists and, on 13 July the question will be posed to a panel of experts in digital holography and light field technology.

The HoloCenter is dedicated to providing educational programs about holography, access for artists to holographic facilities through artist-in-residence programs and exhibitions of holographic art. To learn more, please visit www.holocenter.org

(After the event, I learnt from Linda that the seminar had originally been scheduled for March with the intention to use it as an opportunity to celebrate Ken's birthday (he turned 88 on 20 March) but it was too soon. Halfway through a practice session for the event a few weeks ago Juris asked if there was any reason that 11 May had been chosen for the date of the event – as it was his 85th birthday. It makes we wonder whose birthday falls on 15 June!)

in Brief

German Science Council to Fund Optics Research Campus in Hannover

The German Science Council has recommended funding for a new research building and campus in the Hannover Marienwerder Science Park. ‘OPTICUM — Optics University Center and Campus’ will bring together activities in the fields of optics, production technology, materials development, and computer science. The four-floor building will feature more than 43,000 sq ft of space.

The OPTICUM will be financed (subject to the Joint Science Conference’s final decision) with €54.2 million ($65.5 million). The federal government and the state of Lower Saxony will each contribute half of the funding.

The complex will bring together the approximately 120 optics researchers who are part of the Cluster of Excellence PhoenixD: Photonics, Optics, and Engineering — Innovation Across Disciplines. That group is currently working on novel integrated optics solutions, though its members are not working in a central location. Between 2019 and 2025, PhoenixD will receive approximately €52 million ($62.9 million) from the federal government and the state of Lower Saxony via the German Research Foundation (DFG). The cluster is a collaboration of TU Braunschweig, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute), Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, and Laser Zentrum Hannover eV.

In 2020, Leibniz University Hannover founded the Leibniz School of Optics & Photonics (LSO); this is closely linked to the Cluster of Excellence PhoenixD and will manage OPTICUM. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2022, with completion expected by 2026.

WiMi Hologram Cloud in the News Again

WiMi Hologram Cloud is a holographic technical solution provider that focuses on professional areas including holographic AR automotive HUD software, 3D holographic pulse LiDAR and head-mounted light field holographic equipment (see HN January 2021). The company recently announced that it has obtained a patent for its holographic real-time imaging system with atomised particle sizes between 2-4 microns (μm).

The holographic real-time imaging system covered by the patent has replaced the traditional dry recording plates with a spatial light modulator that is capable of achieving real-time optical production through the utilisation of computer-generated digital holograms. According to the patent, the system has a series of advantages, compared with traditional optical holography technology, such as a computer interface, user-friendly operations, and realtime displays.

The system also includes an input module, a carrier module, and a screen module. The input module is based on a computergenerated hologram. The carrier module is comprised of a laser, an expanded beam collimator lens, a polariser, a spatial light modulator, a deflector, and a Fourier lens.

The laser's beam output passes through these components to project the object in the input module onto the screen module.

The patent also covers holographic electrostatic nebulisation – the conversion of a substance into a spray – which leverages the interactions between the electric field force, Coulomb force, droplet surface tension, and droplet surface stickiness to achieve nebulisation.

Compared with other atomisation methods, holographic electrostatic atomisation has the advantages of smaller atomisation particle sizes, a singular particle size, and wide spatial dispersion. By controlling the parameters of different algorithms, the patent claims that the system can achieve atomisation sizes between 2μm and 4μm for different atomised particles.

Holographic electrostatic atomisation can now be adopted in a wide variety of areas, including medical, industrial, environmental, transportation, electrostatic imaging, 3D printing, and electric vehicles, as well as in other fields in the future.

An Inverse Designed Metalens 3D-Printed on an Optical Fibre Tip

A new generation of lenses – metalenses – is starting to replace bulky curved lenses with simple, flat surfaces that use nanostructures to focus light. These flat surfaces – metasurfaces – have enabled the design of diffraction-based flat devices to replicate the functionalities of conventional lenses with sub-wavelength or fewwavelength thicknesses.

These metasurface materials have led to the development of novel optical devices (holograms, gratings, axicons, polarisationselective devices) and might even put true holographic movies within grasp.

In new work reported in Nano Letters researchers at Northwestern University have now successfully designed and experimentally demonstrated an inversedesigned metalens to operate at a nearinfrared wavelength.

Unlike the conventional way of designing optical elements – where one starts with a well-known studied structure – the inversedesign method allows for arbitrary initial guesses for an optimal design. This is achieved by setting a hard constraint on the objective of the design and searching for optimal design inversely.

Experimentally, the team fabricated the metalens using a two-photon polymerisation system, commonly known as 3D nanoprinter, which is capable of printing structures on the order of 100 nm. The fibre tip metalens facilitates the printing of structures on non-conventional surfaces, which is not easily accessible by bulky commercial direct laser printers.

To demonstrate the effectiveness of their approach, the team built a homemade direct laser printing system using the fabricated metalens on a fibre tip. The research shows that the miniaturized optical element performs similar or better than its bulky counterparts.

The immediate possible application of this work is the ability to print and create structures on surfaces that are otherwise difficult to achieve using conventional direct laser printing systems.

Design for OPTICUM (© International architectural office Henn).

Holography at virtual. drupa

Iscent’s technology generates patterns at a microscopic scale on a range of different base materials using heat and mechanical force applied in rotary format. The material to be treated needs to have a degree of viscoelasticity but can be as a thin as a matter of microns. The optical effects on paper can replace the traditional holographic effect that are often seen on plastics.

Elsewhere in the trade show, Univacco from Tainan City, Taiwan presented its credentials as a vacuum and coating firm, providing various decorative and functional foils which include hot stamping foils, cold foils, digital foils and holographic foils.

Univacco’s seamless range of holographic patterns increase the flexibility of design and layout, which don’t have to be planned to avoid the interruption of the shim line. The company also has a range of holographic cold transfer foils that offers overprinting for flexographic printing.

The company’s headquarters in Taiwan operates as its R&D and global operations centre as well as its management hub. Univacco also has 23 subsidiaries and sole distributors, and more than 60 distributors around the world.

To create a lively online environment to allow colleagues and visitors to mingle, the virtual event ran a ‘matchmaking’ facility that helped companies make sales contacts. But for an industry that thrives on a ‘don’t tell me just show me’ mentality we are all looking forward to 2024 when drupa can return to its natural home in the Messe Düsseldorf.

Diffractive Elements Guide Consumer Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR) has the ability to overlay a layer of useful digital information over the real world. It is currently used in professional, military and educational settings where small volume manufacturing commands a higher selling price. To attain widespread commercial acceptance, AR glasses will have to get thinner, lighter and, most importantly, cheaper.

According to a recent market report , the projections for sales of AR and Virtual Reality (VR) will increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 54.0% from 2020 to 2024 – enticing hundreds of companies to invest in developing the chain of optical devices that will be necessary to achieve mass produced, low-cost headsets for the consumer market.

Simultaneously, a successful AR solution also needs to achieve a high-quality image, a large field of view (FOV), and a full-immersion experience in a compact form factor without added weight or bulk.

The need for a wide FOV combined with a projection surface only an inch or so from the wearer’s eye presents major constraints to the AR hardware that guides the light from the projector to the eye.

The original Google Glass headset, the first consumer AR device to reach the market, had a horizontal FOV of only 12.5°. The fixed region of human-sustained eye gaze measures 40°-50° wide, which sets the requirements for current state-of-the-art horizontal FOV in commercial Mixed Reality (MR) devices like the Microsoft HoloLens 2 (43°).

Human binocular vision encompasses a FOV of 120°, so many next-generation consumer AR systems are driving to wider FOVs for a more compelling, fully immersive experience. Google Glass used a flat optical combiner composed of a mirror and polarizing beamsplitter—a traditional refractive optical concept. Various other optical-combiner designs may involve the use of mirrors, prisms, curved combiners, or freeform optics. These optical combiners lend themselves to rather bulky and less wearable designs.

An alternative way to guide the projected image to the eye is the use of waveguide combiners, which propagate the light field via total internal reflection (TIR), bouncing it along between the inner and outer surface of the lens. Waveguide technology using an image projector tucked away out of the line of vision projects the image into a small peripheral area of the display lens, then propagates it along the lens to an extraction point in front of the eye.

This example of Total Internal Reflection is licensed under CC BY-SA.

The light management structure on the surface of a waveguide typically involves a diffractive optical element (DOE) that injects the light over a small area into the waveguide, distributes it to a large exit pupil, and extracts it to the eye. Diffractive waveguides are considered the most mature AR combiner technology, used in the Microsoft HoloLens, Magic Leap One, and Vuzix M4000.

Alternatively, a holographic optical element (HOE) can fulfil the same waveguide function as a DOE.

DOEs are nanophotonic structures manufactured using either subtractive methods, such as reactive ion etching (RIE), or additive processes, such as nanoimprint lithography (NIL), the latter of which requires a resin with a refractive index matching that of the glass.

HOEs, on the other hand, typically use the phenomenon of interference between two or more beams of light to form a standing wave to record a grating structure that subsequently shapes and guides light by diffraction.

Bringing consumer AR technology to maturity requires entirely new manufacturing workflows to take shape, forcing established glass manufacturers, such as SCHOTT AG (Mainz, Germany), to partner with players in the field of diffractive optics. One important partnership in the ecosystem has been established between SHOTT and optics designer and manufacturer WaveOptics (Abingdon, UK), nanotech coating developer Inkron (Espoo, Finland), and process equipment supplier EV Group (St Florian, Austria).

WaveOptics has launched diffractive waveguides with different optical architectures using between one and three waveguide layers. While their three-layer solution ODIN offers a FOV as high as 60°, their one-layer ultrathin KATANA design is lightweight and features low power consumption.

Whichever waveguide approach is used, bringing wafer manufacturing to an unprecedented level of precision and reproducibility, with the tightest possible tolerances, is critical in helping establish a new supply chain, facilitating faster high-quality pilot runs and enabling mass volume manufacturing of AR glasses at an attractive cost.

Holographic Gas Sensors Alert Presence of Toxic Gases

Materials scientists have devised a variety of methods to detect and alert operators to harmful substances that typically use electrical power – which might be problematic in hazardous gas environments. The advantage of recent research reported in Science Advances is that, while the visual alarm described needs ambient light, it doesn’t need a source of electrical power.

Biological and chemical substances can be rapidly detected in real-time for public health and environmental monitoring purposes. In the report in Science Advances, Inki Kim and a research team in mechanical engineering, materials science and electrical engineering in the Republic of Korea and in Pakistan proposed a compact sensor platform to integrate liquid crystals (LCs) and holographic metasurfaces (a surface with sub-wavelength sized patterns) to sense the existence of a volatile gas, and then provide an immediate visual holographic alarm.

The research team combined the setup to form ultracompact gas sensors without complex instruments in order to detect gas via visual cues. The researchers proved the applicability of the compact sensors by integrating the metasurface-based gas sensor on safety goggles via a one-step nanocasting process.

Liquid crystal integrated metasurfaces

Among the sensors, liquid crystal-based sensors are suited due to their sensitivity and rapid detection in real-time. In this work, Kim et al proposed a compact sensor platform that combined liquid crystals with holographic metasurfaces known as LCintegrated metasurfaces (LC-MS) to sense a volatile gas and provide instant feedback via a visual holographic alarm.

The team developed the metasurface hologram using hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) designed to reproduce different holographic images based on the geometric and propagation phase of each nanostructure. Depending on the presence or absence of volatile gases, the setup could transmit different polarization states of light.

Designing gas-responsive liquid crystal cells

The team first observed and characterised the gas responsiveness of LCs in their nematic phase – which exhibit alignment along the long axis of their rod-like structures. During the experiments, the

scientists used an isopropyl alcohol (IPA) gas as a target hazardous gas for detection. When they exposed LCs to IPA gas at a constant concentration in a closed chamber cell, they transitioned from white to coloured.

The team also conducted experiments with a range of gases with diverse dose conditions to measure detection timeframes at around 1.3 seconds for chloroform, 1.6 seconds for acetone, 13.9 seconds for IPA gas and 58.3 seconds for methanol. With higher doses, they observed faster response rates.

Holographic gas sensors and wearable applications

Kim et al used a ubiquitous volatile gas source ie. a board marker pen containing various organic solvents including IPA. The metasurface hologram devices contained a-Si:H nanoantennae. In the absence of the volatile gas, the sensor projected a smiling holographic image as a safety sign. Upon gas exposure, the sign instantly switched to an exclamation mark to provide an 'alarm sign’. When the team removed the gas, the hologram rapidly restored itself to its safety sign, as the liquid crystals returned to their initial orientation.

Proof-of-concept

As proof of concept, the team printed a flexible and conformal holographic gas sensor on a flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film and attached

that to the surface of safety goggles. The team then optimised parameters of the nanoparticle-resin composite metasurface for 532 nm wavelength incident light, although the construction also functioned across a broader range of wavelengths. In this way, they developed a clear holographic alarm.

These sensors functioned without any additional complex mechanical and electronic devices to enable lowcost wearable gas sensors that can be used in factories, construction and cleaning applications.

The device can also function in reflective mode by using ambient light instead of an internal light source to develop cheaper, simpler and miniaturised sensor platforms.

Future applications

This type of sensor will have applications to detect the exposure of harmful gases during transportation or gas-sensitive product storage. The team can also extend the application by developing wearable devices based on flexible metasurfaces formed via a one-step nanocasting process. Unlike conventional nanoprinting, Kim et al included a functionalised ultraviolet-curable resin with titanium oxide nanoparticles as a resin composite for use as a dielectric metasurface during the process, without using complex processes of nanofabrication. The process is also suited for mass-production manufacture.

Holographic gas sensors alert presence of toxic gases (© Kim et al).

Secret Sharing with Metasurface Holography

For many years, optical holography has been a crucial security element against counterfeiting, with several important applications in identity cards, passports, and banknotes. And now, metasurface holography is finding applications to enhance data security with information encryption. Secret sharing is a well-established cryptographic method for storing highly sensitive information like encryption keys for encoded data. The technique addresses the problem of splitting a secret into different shares, without revealing any information to its shareholders.

In work recently reported in Science Advances, a team from Paderborn University in Germany and the Beijing Institute of Technology have demonstrated an all-optical solution for secret sharing based on metasurface holography.

In their concept, metasurface holograms are used as spatially separable shares that carry encrypted messages in the form of holographic images. Two of these shares can be recombined by bringing them close together. Light passing through this stack of metasurfaces accumulates the phase shift of both holograms and optically reconstructs the secret with high fidelity. In this technique, the corruption of a single shareholder does not leak any information about the shared secret.

In addition, the hologram generated by each single metasurface can uniquely identify its shareholder. Furthermore, the inherent translational alignment sensitivity between two stacked metasurface holograms can be used for spatial multiplexing.

Design flexibility

The design flexibility of metasurfaces (surfaces with sub-wavelength sized patterns) stems from the huge variety of possible nanostructure shapes and can be used to access multiple degrees of freedom (DOFs) per pixel. For metasurface holography, these additional DOFs offer the possibility of realising novel multiplexing schemes for improved information security, where different holographic images are encoded along multiple optical dimensions. However, so far, metasurface multiplexing frameworks were usually one-layer solutions, which only allow for the access of different information channels, but not for the physical splitting of these information channels across multiple shareholders. In this context, multilayer layouts offer an alternative as they allow for the physical separation of layers and their inherent information.

Shares

In their optical secret sharing scheme, the research team use a set of nanostructured optical metasurfaces as ‘shares’. Each share contains an encoded phaseonly Fourier hologram, which can be reconstructed in the far field upon illumination with circularly polarised light. These single-layer images serve as a unique identifier for each metasurface. Meanwhile, when two metasurfaces are stacked 100 microns (μm) apart, the illumination of the cascaded configuration creates a new holographic image that is distinct from their two single-layer holograms. This cascaded holographic image can be used as an optical secret that is only revealed if both metasurfaces are stacked. The concept can be extended to a larger set of shares where only the combination of all of them will reveal the stored secret.

The cascaded hologram’s functionality can be understood by considering that the light passing through the cascaded arrangement accumulates the phase delays of both layers. In an idealised case, where both metasurfaces are placed on top of each other, this would correspond to adding up both phase masks pixel by pixel.

Considering that the same cascaded phase mask can be built up through combinations of different single-phase masks, it is possible to share the ‘secret’ of the cascaded image across two metasurface layers without revealing any information about the shared secret within the singlelayer images.

Meanwhile, by adding up both phase profiles pixelwise, the phase relations of the single-phase masks are no longer preserved, which allows for the multiplexing of single and cascaded images.

Proof of principle

To prove the principle, the team demonstrated a case where two different translational positions result in two different images for the cascaded hologram. The single metasurface holograms (shares 1 and 2) contain the encoded images of the numbers ‘1’ and ‘2’. At the same time, the images of the numbers ‘3’ and ‘4’ appear in the cascaded arrangement for two distinct overlap positions, which lie five pixels (25 μm) apart along the x axis.

Having demonstrated the principle, the researchers believe that the concept has real applications for the protection of encryption keys as it is scalable, both in terms of the stack size and the number of keys, and additional complexity and security can be added by using complex amplitude and phase holograms.

Translational multiplexing with cascaded holograms (© Science Advances).

Holograms Show Their True Colours

True colour holography offers a tantalising prospect of heightened reality imaging that provides not just solidity and depth but also true colour image rendition. Hologaphy News® takes a look at the two ends of the true colour holography spectrum from Prof Martin Richardson's pioneering work at De Montfort University to the crowd sourced full colour hologram lab in a box from LitiHolo.

Some of the world’s first true colour holograms were created at De Montfort University Leicester (DMU), paving the way for commercial opportunities with businesses looking to harness threedimensional imaging technology.

Prof Martin Richardson, an internationally renowned holographer and digital artist, successfully created a series of holograms in the ‘HOLO-LAB’, a specially created technical facility on the university campus. ‘It is a huge technical leap,’ he said. ‘Producing true colour holograms is very difficult and DMU is one of the first universities in the world where this has been achieved. True colour holograms are the most realistic images it’s possible to make and the commercial applications are fantastic. We are playing our part in bringing holography closer to mainstream use.’

High-definition true colour holograms have many practical applications in many different sectors, such as healthcare, where realistic imaging could allow doctors to find internal problems faster.

Prof Richardson added: ‘applications include non-destructive testing for engineering, museum archiving and documentation, not to mention the holograms on our credit cards and banknotes. Our most valuable objects may be recorded as a true-colour hologram and the resulting recording sent out for display to another institution.’

Prof Richardson – regarded as an imaging pioneer – has made holograms of many famous people, including film directors Martin Scorsese and Alan Parker, as well as the fine artist Sir Peter Blake and writer Will Self. He also worked with rock star David Bowie on a project using 3D promotional material.

You might think that since holograms are inherently colourful why is it so difficult to produce true colour?

Recording an optical hologram normally requires a temporally and spatially coherent light source - which means using a laser at a specific wavelength.

This doesn't lend itself easily to true colour image rendition because, whilst it’s true that the grating structure of a hologram does provide for different wavelengths of light to be bent through predictable angles, getting that rainbow of colour to align so that the colours combine to render true colour fidelity requires controlled optical engineering.

Hologram ‘Lab-in-a-Box’

Which is why LitiHolo’s Kickstarter funded full-colour hologram lab in a box is so impressive. The kit includes separate red, green, and blue lasers, 20 plates of Instant Hologram Film for making up to 20 different colour holograms, laser mount assemblies for each laser, a colour combining system, multiple configurations, and detailed instructions.

If you already have a basic LitiHolo Hologram Kit, you can purchase an upgrade to full-colour holograms which will allow you to build on the existing red laser system and components.

True colour rendition is an important feature for all types of image displays, so let’s hope that the work that Prof Richardson and LitiHolo are doing continues to deliver results.

Holographic Display AnotherAdds Dimension to Doom

Holography News™ has previously reported on Looking Glass Factory’s personal 3D image display called the Portrait (see HN January 2021). Now the company’s 3D light-field technology is gathering fans in the ‘first-person shooter’ gaming community.

Developed by id Software and released in 1993 for the MS-DOS operating system, Doom is widely regarded as the world's first real first-person shooter game. While the game was highly controversial at the time of its release, due to its graphical content, it successfully started a genre that is still alive today.

What set Doom apart from other arcade inspired games of the time was its firstperson point of view (POV) and the realism of the graphics. The shooter’s POV meant that the protagonist (that’s you) seems to move through the scene, avoiding obstacles and looking around corners for the bad guys. This created perspective and obscuration graphics that are tailor made for a holographic makeover.

Twitter user Jan Kaiser, a technology specialist recently revealed what Doom looks like when played on a holographic display. The effect is impressive, bringing the game that pioneered three-dimensional graphics into a new realm of 3D. The display, created by Looking Glass Factory, allows the player to realistically peek around corners by simply rotating the screen, a feature that isn't available in even the highest resolution contemporary games’ graphics.

Putting the viewer in control of being able to physically move a screen to look around corners is a simple but effective idea that offers a glimpse of what gaming technology might look like in the future.

The Looking Glass Portrait holographic display is 7.9”, has a 58° degree viewing cone, and an input resolution of 1,536 x 2,048 pixels. It's manufactured from glass, plastics, and a ‘proprietary lens mix’. Looking Glass Factory have it on pre-order for $249, although the price will rise to $349 after it starts shipping in July.

Other than experiments with games, the display simply plugs into a PC via USB-C and you can then create your own holographic photos and video messages to enjoy.

True colour hologram (© Prof Martin Richardson DMU).

The PicoMaster-H – a New Generation of Direct Write Systems

4PICO Litho of the Netherlands has announced the addition of the PicoMaster-H system to the PicoMaster range of high resolution, single-beam, direct write lithography (SB-DWL) hologram and Fresnel lens mastering systems.

Amongst the applications listed by 4PICO Litho for the PicoMaster-H are security holograms and OVDs, optical banknote stripes and threads, diffractive 'rainbow' patterns and Fresnel lenses and ‘bas relief’ images.

The PicoMaster-H systems are turnkey, self-contained systems and come supplied with a 405 nm laser, professional 4,096 greyscale mode, three software-selectable spot sizes/resolutions, a high-resolution optical real-time auto-focus system, and PicoHLD – a fully featured, user-friendly hologram, diffractive pattern, and Fresnel lens design and composition program.

The software allows a user to design and compose any complex multi-featured hologram, OVD, or diffractive pattern for security or packaging applications with ease. The software is provided with a collection of algorithms that can be used to achieve the myriad of optical affects and hologram types available.

PicoHLD also supports user libraries that enable the recording of proprietary and unique effects.

The PicoMaster-H system can create submicron structured surfaces directly onto photoresist plates over areas up to 215 x 215 mm (8.5” x 8.5”) in size. It is a directwrite lithography (DWL) mastering tool for the origination of small and medium format plates and complements the large-format capabilities of the PicoMaster XF (see HN December 2020).

The system is also supplied with Sitech's Pattern Generator, a program for the generation of random shape and gradient ‘pillars of light’ patterns for optical security and packaging applications.

PicoHLD

All 4PICO Litho DWL hologram mastering systems are provided with PicoHLD (Pico Hologram and Lens Designer) – a fully featured and user-friendly design program that has been under continual development for over six years.

The PicoMaster-H’s modular and hot swappable optical head can be quickly and easily replaced by the customer, meaning that a service engineer is not required to fly out to the customer’s premises to service the optical system.

There are four models in the single-beam PicoMaster-H range – the PicoMaster 100H, the PicoMaster 150-H, the PicoMaster 200-H and the PicoMaster 500-H (by special request). The PicoMaster-H and PicoMaster XF-H ranges are exclusively distributed by Spatial Imaging-Sitech of the UK.

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Tribute: The Icon of the Indian Holography and Authentication Industry

By the ASPA Family

The news of the untimely demise of Mr U K Gupta has left the Authentication Solution Providers’ Association (ASPA) family and the entire authentication industry in shock. ASPA would like to pay tribute to this great soul who was not only our founder and guide but also our pillar of support.

technologies. An avid team player who encouraged knowledge sharing, he was very enthusiastic in sharing with any ASPA member his collection of anti-counterfeiting tools, handbooks, and reference samples which he had collected from across the globe.

He was the soul of all ASPA meetings and gatherings. His sense of humour, out of the box suggestions, hospitality and his unwavering commitment to the holographic and authentication industry will be missed by all of us. On a personal level, he was an excellent human willing to help anyone without hesitation.

All ASPA members would like to place on record our sincere gratitude for his contribution towards building and nurturing the authentication ecosystem in India. ASPA would also like to highlight his major contributions to the industry in his 30year association.

IHMA: A History of Holography

The International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA) is made up of 80 of the world’s leading hologram companies who cooperate to maintain the highest professional, security and quality standards in support of their customers.

The IHMA’s website (ihma.org) is a great resource for members and clients alike. After the recent addition of a glossary of key terms and definitions in regular use within the industry (see HN May 2021), the association has now added a History of Holography –which sets out a timeline of key events in the 70-year history of commercial holography and the technology’s role in anti-counterfeiting, authentication, currency and ID document security, brand and packaging enhancement and, more recently, virtual and augmented reality ihma.org/ milestones/

U K Gupta June 9, 1954 – June 1, 2021.

‘Guptaji’ as he was fondly called by one and all was among the pioneering architects of the holographic industry in India. As a passionate holographer and technophile, he was amongst a select few who developed immense knowledge of holographic processes, machinery, raw materials, and technology. He kept himself abreast of the latest technologies available globally to ensure that India was in the forefront of holographic

Laying the foundation of the Indian hologram industry: a visionary, Mr U K Gupta realised the potential of security holograms in combating counterfeiting and became one of the first-generation entrepreneurs in this industry, cementing the foundation of the holography industry in India.

He founded Holostik in 1991 and under his leadership made it one of the most globally respected companies in the authentication business. When he started Holostik the security hologram technology was still in the nascent stage and the technology was limited to only a few companies. It was his vision and foresight that brought this technology to India.

The timeline is a searchable reconstruction of holographic milestones from the earliest years of scientific discovery, through commercialisation by mass reproduction, acceptance as (arguably) the most effective first level security device on documents of value, all the way to its role in today’s push for heightened reality imaging.

It’s unfortunately unavoidable that any history of holography can only aim at being comprehensive rather than exhaustive but, as this is a live document, you can add key events to the timeline by contacting serge@ recon-intl.com

Colour Holography at DMU and OpTIC

An article in last month’s edition of Holography News® (see HN May 2021) reported on Prof Martin Richardson’s work on colour holography at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK (DMU). But the story of true colour holography at DMU dates back more than 20 years as this account, adapted from communications with Prof Hans Bjelkhagen, explains.

Prof Nick Philips invited Prof Bjelkhagen to join the Centre for Modern Optics (CMO) at DMU in December 1997. One reason for the invitation was that, in 1994, Prof Bjelkhagen had already recorded early colour holograms in a single-layer, silver halide experimental panchromatic SLAVICH emulsion at Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg, France.1 Before he arrived at DMU, and between 1995 and 1997, Prof Bjelkhagen recorded many colour holograms at Lake Forest College in Illinois, USA.2

In 2004, the CMO – along with Profs Phillips and Bjelkhagen – moved from DMU to the newly established OpTIC Technium in Wales (see HN February 2005).

Many large-format colour holograms were recorded at OpTIC deploying a Denisyuk recording setup, with three laser beams combining the use of two dichroic mirrors and passing through the same beam expander and spatial filter. The resulting ‘white’ laser beam illuminates both the holographic plate and the object itself through the plate.

The three primary laser wavelengths are often employed: 476nm provided by an argon ion laser; 532nm provided by a CW frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser; and 647nm provided by a krypton ion laser.

It is possible to control independently the RGB ratio by individually changing the output power of the lasers, while the overall exposure energy is controlled solely by the exposure time.

Amongst the many projects undertaken by the team at OpTIC, ‘Bringing the Artefacts Back to the People’ (see HN June 2009) is of particular note. The project involved collaboration with a number of major museums including the National Museum of Wales, the British Museum, the Maritime Museum in Liverpool, as well as with the Royal Commission for Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales. Fullcolour holograms of various artefacts were recorded using the analogue Denisyuk technique. The holograms were completed by the end of 2009, after which they were displayed as a travelling exhibition which toured North Wales and its borders.

The exhibition first opened at Llangollen Museum in June 2010 and later at the museums of Grosvenor (Chester), Wrexham, Llandudno, Bangor and at many others. One of the recorded artefacts, supplied by the British Museum, was a 14,000-year-old decorated horse jawbone from the ice age, or late glacial period, in Britain. Another artefact recorded for the exhibition was the Tudor Jug in the shape of an owl from Chester Museum.

In total, ten full-colour holograms of different artefacts were included in the touring museum exhibition.3-5 The touring holograms belong to the Llangollen Museum in Wales and are now kept by them.

References

1. H. I. Bjelkhagen, and D. Vukičević, ‘Lippmann colour holography in a singlelayer silver-halide emulsion,’ in Fifth International Symposium on Display Holography. Proc. SPIE 2333, 34-48 (1995).

2. H. I. Bjelkhagen, T. H. Jeong, and D. Vukičević, ‘Colour reflection holograms recorded in an ultrahigh-resolution singlelayer silver halide emulsion,’ Journal of Imaging Science and Technology 40, 134146 (1996).

3. H. I. Bjelkhagen and J. Cook, ‘Colour holography of the oldest known work of art from Wales,’ The British Museum Technical Research Bulletin 4, 87-94 (2010).

4. H. I. Bjelkhagen, ‘Colour holography: the ultimate 3D imaging technique,’ The Imaging Science Journal 5, (2) 83-89 (2011).

5. H. I. Bjelkhagen, and A. Osanlou, ‘Colour holography for museums: bringing the artifacts back to the people,’ in Practical Holography XXV: Materials and Applications. Proc. SPIE 7957, 0B-1 – 0B7 (2011).

The colour hologram recording room at CMO, OpTIC (© Prof Hans Bjelkhagen).

Colour hologram of the Tudor Jug and sergeant-at-arms ring (© Prof Hans Bjelkhagen).

World First for ‘Holographic’ Meeting Rooms

Under its current editor, Holography News® has adopted an interpretation of the use of ‘holography’ to include technologies that use the term as a broader definition of a technique to enhance the sense of depth, solidity and realism to the viewer.

And so it was interesting to learn about the opening of the Two Hearts Pizzeria – an immersive 3D experience that enabled diners in London and Edinburgh, 650 kilometres away from each other, to enjoy a meal together as if they were sitting at the same table. Over two days, more than 30 participants were able to face each other and make eye contact, life-sized, in 3D and 4K quality, as if they were actually opposite one another.

Musion 3D, which was responsible for the technology, is showcasing its holographic portfolio on demos that are available at the viewer’s convenience via Teams or Zoom.

Holograms for Zoom

Another claim for a ‘world-first’ comes from DVEHolographics for an HDR (high dynamic range image) system that shows Zoom users as holograms. US-based DVE has announced a hologram meeting experience that requires no dedicated production studios and no projectors to create HDR hologram images of people while conferencing. The company says this makes for significant cost savings and makes exponential growth in usage achievable.

Millions of people with video apps can now rapidly reproduce themselves as holograms using Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex, and DVE’s 4K video service and appear at coworking meeting rooms and event spaces equipped with DVE’s holographic displays. DVE also revealed a new generation experience for co-working spaces, based on its HDR transparent direct view displays, eliminating the need for projectors. The transparent direct view displays are integral to DVE’s DV (Direct View) Holo-Podiums. The podiums are ideal for co-working locations since they can be instantly rolled into offices, meeting rooms, and event spaces with almost no set-up involved. The DV Holo-Podium, when not used for meetings and events, serves as an interactive holographic virtual concierge.

3D video chats

And so as not to miss out on big tech’s current fascination with ‘holograms’, Google has initiated Project Starline – a new 3D video chat capability that they ‘believe is

where person-to-person communication technology can and should go,’ because: ‘the effect is the feeling of a person sitting just across from you, like they are right there’.

You may not be wearing a head-mounted device and the feeling may be immersive, but you are still looking at a person in a scene through a screen.

3D printers for light Brigham Young University (BYU) holography research group, on the other hand, is trying to get rid of monitors and screens altogether with Optical Trap Displays (OTDs).

The researchers use a laser beam to trap a particle in the air and then push it around, leaving a luminous, floating path. As the researchers describe it, it’s like ‘a 3D printer for light’.

The particle moves through a number of points several times a second, creating an image by persistence of vision. The higher the resolution and the refresh rate of the system, the more convincing the effect can be; ultimately, the user will not be able to perceive updates to the imagery displayed to them, and at sufficient resolution the viewer will have difficulty distinguishing display image points from real-world image points.

Lead researcher Dan Smalley notes that ‘most 3D displays require you to look at a screen, but our technology allows us to create images floating in space — and they’re physical; not some mirage. This technology can make it possible to create vibrant animated content that orbits around or crawls on or explodes out of every day physical objects’.

Researcher Wesley Rogers adds: ‘we can play some fancy tricks with motion parallax, and we can make the display look a lot bigger than it physically is. This methodology would allow us to create the illusion of a much deeper display up to theoretically an infinite size display’.

Many readers of Holography News will believe that the ‘whole graphic’ capability of wavefront reconstruction makes holography the ultimate 3D image technology. Technically, this is probably true, but as the examples above demonstrate you don’t always need the full amplitude and phase of a light wavefront to give a strong sense of solidity and depth. Particularly, when you can control the viewing zone and provide the strong depth cues of stereopsis, obscuration, and motion parallax.

U K TributeGupta

He must be credited for his early realisation of the tremendous potential of security holograms in the Indian government’s revenue protection and document security programme. The two important developments which shaped our industry include the modernisation of the India voter identity card and the usage of the security hologram as an excise adhesive label, starting with Tamil Nadu in 1998-99 and expanding to 23 states today.

Contribution to ASPA: his contribution to ASPA is immense and the void left by him cannot be filled; he will be continued to be missed by us.

With nine member companies on 1 December 1998, he founded the precursor to ASPA – the Hologram Manufacturers Association of India (HoMAI). He served as the Association President during 1998-2006 and 20082010. After 16 years of HoMAI, he was among the main proponents in changing the fabric of the association to focus on other authentication technologies. Finally, with the support of other members, ASPA was born in 2014.

He led ASPA again from 2015-2019 and with the support of all other members nurtured it to become self-regulated, ethical, and one of its kind among industry associations in India. His love and commitment towards the association was such that he never missed a single Annual General Meeting, of either HoMAI or ASPA, in the last 23 years. A wonderful person, no Association AGM was complete without him sharing his real-life stories, and anecdotes about the challenges and efforts he faced in building the industry.

Making India proud at the global level: an alumnus of Banaras Hindu University, he received many national and international awards for entrepreneurship. In addition to his contribution to the growth of the Indian holographic industry he served many terms on the board of the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA). He is the only Indian citizen/holographer to receive the coveted ‘Brian Monaghan Award’ for his contribution to the world of holography, by IHMA.

Mr U K Gupta is survived by his wife Vandana and sons Ankit and Shobhit Gupta. Though he is no more with us, his legacy and commitment towards the authentication community will continue to live on in our hearts forever. We will always miss you Guptaji.

Standing the Test of Time

Martin Richardson gained the world’s first Doctorate in Holographic Art from The Royal College of Art in 1988. In 1999, he was awarded the Millennium Fellowship sponsored by the UK Government Commission, and in 2009 was granted The Royal Photographic Society’s Medal in recognition of achievements and contributions to the advancement of holographic imaging, endowed by the late Graham Saxby Hon FRPS.

William is a true pioneer of holography and was artist-in-residence. He inspired me, introduced me to the ground-breaking work of Steve Benton at MIT. All these things happened within a very short period. At that time, the Royal College of Art had established a small sand table on the first floor of the photography building in South Kensington and chemist Jeff Blyth, supported by Michael Langford and John Hedgecoe, was already recording holograms with students. I was the first dedicated student and two years later graduated with the first MA in photography, in 1984.

Although all of my outputs were holograms, the Royal College of Art hadn’t caught up! The following year, the Holography Unit was born when Graham Saxby and Nick Philips, together with Peter Miller signed up.

I graduated with my doctorate in holography in 1988. Here’s a link to that part of my life – http://thegluefactory.org/holographyunit/

Q: Having read some of your work I appreciate the quality of the visuals that you use in your books, but how difficult is it to produce what is a 3D visual experience on a 2D piece of paper?

A: It’s an insufferable task but needs be! We inherited the world of William Caxton and his printing press. For reference, I suggest Edwin A Abbott’s ‘Flatland’ if you haven’t read it already.

Q: Holography News recently covered the inaugural online seminar from the newly established HoloCenter in New York where your name came up as one of the few remaining academic holographers still conducting research in display holography. What are you currently working on?

A: I currently have four ‘live’ research projects: ‘Multi-Wave True-Colour Reflection Holography’, a project by Dr Vivian Suresh Kumar; ‘Schlieren Photography and its Transition into Digital Holography’, a project by PhD candidate Oliver Peacock; ‘Acoustic Holography’, a project by PhD candidate Daniel Blackmore; and ‘Visualizing Rich Data-Sets using Digital Holography’, a project led by PhD candidate Tove Dalenius.

Q: Apart from your research interests, can you give a sense of what the role of Professor of Modern Holography at De Montfort University entails?

A: This may sound slightly weird, but I’ve never considered myself as academic. I didn’t join the university until I had a successful career running my own company, The Holographic Image Studio (THIS), based in the OXO Tower, Central London. Serendipity has played a huge part in my role of becoming a professor and a professor can only be as good as the research students they enrol.

His most recent book, ‘The Hologram: Principles and Techniques’, was coauthored by John Wiltshire and published by Wiley-Blackwell (ISBN-10: 1119088909). He is currently Professor of Modern Holography at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, where he is Head of The Holographic Research Group (HRG) in the faculty of Art, Design and Architecture. Francis Tuffy, Editor of Holography News® caught up with Martin to find out more about his life in holography.

Q: Can you tell us a little bit more about how you got into holography at the Royal College of Art in the 1980s?

A: A young scientist, Paul Walton, introduced me to holography as a fine art student. He encouraged me to enrol on the first holography workshop, run and operated by Susan Gamble and Michael Wenyon at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London. It was here, together with Ian Lancaster, that I was introduced to art holograms by Bill Culbert, Jeremy Diggle, Peter Donebauer, Liliane Lijn and William Molteni.

Q: You’ve worked on many holographic projects and with many recognisable personalities including film directors Martin Scorsese, Alan Parker and rock star David Bowie. Have you developed a way to capture the character of the celebrity during the recording process?

A: Yes, I’ve been fortunate in working with many people I admire; my favourite being David Bowie. God blessed me with a sense of humour and I’ve always found that to be an icebreaker when working with the high flyers.

Q: You very kindly helped me out when I was setting up a holography studio at the school where I was training as a science teacher. Is it important that holography continues to be taught as a science discipline?

A: It’s impossible to think of light without also considering holography, followed by its application to the real world. I really believe it’s one of the few areas of knowledge where teachers/students can engage with ‘hands on’ practical science.

Q: The theme of the HoloCenter series of debates was to do with the adoption of the term ‘hologram’ to describe Pepper's Ghost displays, volumetric displays, lenticular displays, multi-view autostereoscopic video displays, Light Field Displays and augmented and virtual reality. How would you answer the question ‘what is a hologram?’

A: That’s quite simple, the answer can only be wavefront reconstruction. Why the debate?

Q: In a few words can you sum up your career in holography to date and what you hope it holds for the future?

A: Reducing one’s life into a handful of words is a mighty challenge but I will ask these questions. Did I achieve what I set out to achieve? Did I help others to succeed? Does my work in holography stand the test of time?

Martin Richardson.

DreamVu Recognised for Petal Lens 3D Vision Innovation

DreamVu Inc, a leader in omnidirectional 3D vision systems, recently announced that its PAL (Phase Alternating Line) and PAL MINI 360° stereo depth cameras were recognised among the best in 3D vision by the judges of the Vision Systems Design 2021 Innovators Awards programme.

In a recent edition of Vision Systems Design, Dennis Scimeca describes the technology that is designed to replace the use of multiple stereo vision cameras, or LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), to allow 360° of scene awareness.

For autonomous vehicles and robots, the machine’s full understanding of its environment is essential. Inspiring consumer confidence in self-driving cars, for example, may prove difficult if the vehicle is not at least as competent as a human driver who uses side-view and rear-view mirrors to see. LiDAR systems and the full 360° views they generate were one of the earliest technologies employed by autonomous vehicle developers.

Coupling LiDAR with complementary technologies such as stereo cameras provides increased fidelity and redundancy for depth perception and object location. This requires additional computing power. Stereo cameras, a generally more affordable option than LiDAR for 3D imaging, replicate the human eye by capturing left and right views of an object. Resolving the baseline disparity between the images provides the necessary data for producing depth maps or 3D point clouds. Also like the human eye, stereo cameras have a limited field-ofview (FoV), such that in some applications

a full 360° of situational awareness may require multiple cameras.

But now, the camera developed by 3D vision systems company DreamVu senses in full 360° at all times by using a proprietary stereo lens. Each petal on the stereo lens is a mirror (see figure). When light enters the body of the camera, it strikes and bounces off the petals. It must strike at least two petals to create a final, stereo image of that point. The two vectors generated by the same point strike the CMOS (complementary metaloxide semiconductor) image sensor at two different places, creating stereo left and stereo right views of that point.

Depending on the placement of the point relative to the position of the stereo lens, the light from that point may strike multiple petals and create multiple vectors. In this case, even though the light will strike the CMOS sensor at more than two locations, an algorithm in the DreamVu software resolves the multiple vectors from that point into two positions on the sensor, left and right. The more vectors the CMOS sensor receives from that point, the higher the resolution of the final stereo image of that point.

All of the points taken together create the stereo left and stereo right images of the panoramic scene captured by the camera. The resolution of the disparity between the two images creates a panoramic RGB (red, green, blue additive colour) image and a panoramic depth map.

The raw captured images are distorted. To produce the stereo RGB images and corresponding depth map, the PAL

camera’s software removes the distortion of the image using proprietary computational imaging routines. According to DreamVu, this process is more computer-friendly than stitching together two narrow-field stereo images to create an image with a larger view.

Stereo cameras depend on the presence of objects in their FoV to create disparity and calculate depth. When facing a completely blank, featureless white wall they likely cannot register the distance to the wall. A full 360° view affords the PAL camera greater opportunity to detect this texture information somewhere in its FoV, for instance the seam where a white wall and a white ceiling meet.

Each lens of a stereo camera has a separate FoV and the ability to calculate depth begins at the position where they intersect. This creates a near-field blind spot that necessitates specific working distances. The PAL camera, by virtue of not depending on independent lenses, doesn’t suffer from this near-field blind spot.

Even with its relative advantage regarding FoV limitations, some applications may require multiple PAL cameras. DreamVu suggests that deploying two PAL cameras is more computer-friendly than having to process four stereo feeds simultaneously, however.

(Editor’s note. I have contacted DreamVu to find out whether they have any experience of using images captured from the petal lens architecture stereo camera to create static, as opposed to video, 3D images. I am awaiting a reply.)

Stereo vision camera (© DreamVu).

UCLA Continuing Research in Holographic Imaging

Research groups at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have recently published articles on two very different applications of holography.

The first of the UCLA researchers demonstrated faster holographic imaging using recurrent neural networks (RNN).

Digital holographic imaging is a commonly used microscopy technique in biomedical imaging that reveals rich optical information of the sample, which could be used, for example, to detect pathological abnormalities in tissue slides.

Common image sensors only respond to the intensity of the incoming light. Therefore, reconstructing the complete 3D information of a hologram that is digitally recorded by such sensors has been a challenging task involving optical phase retrieval, which is a time-consuming and computationally intensive step in digital holography.

A research team at UCLA has recently developed a novel holographic phase retrieval technique that can rapidly reconstruct microscopic images of samples with up to 50-fold acceleration compared to existing methods.

This new technique is taking advantage of recurrent neural networks trained using deep learning and incorporates spatial features from multiple holograms to digitally create holographic microscopy images of samples, such as human tissue slides.

Human lung tissue section imaged with hologram reconstruction (© UCLA).

This results in better image quality and faster reconstruction speed, while also enhancing the depth-of-field of the reconstructed sample volume.

This work was published in ‘ACS Photonics’, a journal of the American Chemical Society. UCLA researchers showed the effectiveness of this new holographic imaging method through experiments performed on human lung tissue sections and Pap smears, commonly used for screening of cervical cancer.

These results report the first demonstration of the use of recurrent neural networks for holographic imaging and phase recovery and also open up new opportunities for designing improved holographic microscopes with a reduced number of measurements and increased imaging speeds.

‘This framework can be broadly applicable to various biomedical imaging modalities, including for example fluorescence microscopy, to efficiently utilise a sequence of acquired images to rapidly and accurately create 3D reconstructions of a sample volume,’ said Dr Aydogan Ozcan, the Chancellor’s Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UCLA and an associate director of the California NanoSystems Institute, who is the senior corresponding author of the work.

World’s fastest 3D camera with light-field tomography

The second UCLA piece of work in holography comes from a team of bioengineers at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, who have discovered a new technology that enables a camera to take 3D images at a rate of 100 billion frames per second.

The ultrafast camera can capture a short pulse of light as it travels through a fibre-optic cable wound in a spiral. A study detailing the research, including a demonstration of a proof-of-concept device, was recently published in ‘Nature Communications’.

Light Field Tomography (LIFT) (© UCLA).

‘This is similar to a CT scan, but instead of sending someone, or something, through a large doughnut-shaped machine, we’re taking images from a single point of reference,’ said the study’s principal investigator Liang Gao, an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at UCLA Samueli. ‘The result, following reconstruction by a custom, deep-learning programme, is a highly detailed 3D image.’

Gao and the study’s lead author Xiaohua Feng, a postdoctoral scholar in his Intelligent Optics Laboratory, call the new camera technology ultrafast ‘light field tomography’, or LIFT. While the camera’s speed is not unusual for 2D imaging, it is significantly ahead of what current best 3D cameras can offer, which is only a few frames per second.

In addition to its ultrafast 3D imaging capabilities, a LIFT camera can also photograph fast-moving targets hidden behind other objects or around corners — known as non-line-of-sight imaging — at 30 frames per second. The camera first picks up light from a hidden object, which is projected onto a wall in the camera’s field of vision. Similar to using a mirror, but with less reflective surface, the camera system then computationally reconstructs the obscured scene. The device uses trace amounts of light difference — otherwise undetectable by a human eye — to reconstruct the image into a more distinct 3D picture.

The research suggests that LIFT cameras could be incorporated into autonomous vehicles, allowing them to detect fastmoving hidden objects and make critical decisions. In addition, the technology holds potential for application in medical procedures, enabling surgeons to see behind bones or soft tissue.

The camera uses seven cylindrical lenses — each about 2mm in diameter — stacked against one another in an array. However, instead of a round opening, their apertures are lengthwise slits. Each of the seven lenses is angled toward a unique focus point, and the slits themselves line up in different orientations, allowing the camera to capture an image in detail.

‘When we take a photo with this new camera, we’re looking at multiple directions at the same time,’ Gao said. ‘That is how we can produce the 3D image from one stationary place.’

A Guide to Assuring the Integrity of Secure Documents

A new in-depth guide to help tackle passport booklet fraud has been published by the Secure Identity Alliance (SIA). The report, entitled ‘Passport Fraud Trends and Ways to Combat Them’, argues that document fraud is a serious crime, one that has implications that stretch from personal identity theft all the way through to national security.

Founded in 2013, SIA is a non-profit organisation that brings together public, private and non-government organisations to foster international collaboration on the issues of legal identity, to help shape policy and to provide technical and implementation guidance for national and international ID systems.

Millions of travel documents were reported lost or stolen in 2020; according to Frontex Risk Analysis, passports represented 47% of the fraudulent documents detected at European Union external borders in 2019, leading some commentators to decry a growing passport fraud ‘epidemic’.

The guide was created with assistance from organisations including France’s National Document and Identity Fraud Office and Interpol’s Counterfeit Currency & Security Documents (CCSD) Branch.

Covering issues such as how passports are made and the different types, techniques and objectives of document fraud, the guide goes on to make general recommendations and suggest additional measures to help combat threats to the integrity of secure documents.

The conclusion to the guide stresses that the document fraud landscape is becoming increasingly complicated and requires a strong appreciation of a much bigger picture in order to navigate successfully. Successful controls now hinge on a variety of fast-moving factors that range from the operating methods of fraudsters to new and sometimes highly complex technology.

Two versions

As you might expect, to maximise security, two versions of the report are available.

Authored by the eDocuments Working Group, SIA’s cross-industry task force responsible for guiding the design, manufacturing, issuance and verification of secure documents, the report provides an overall analysis of the document fraud landscape alongside useful guidelines and recommendations on how to strengthen a passport against attack.

In addition to the cost to the individual, document fraud often serves as the foundation upon which other threats are built – for instance human trafficking, drug smuggling, and terrorism.

Passport fraud is a key part of this landscape, and a growing problem.

While COVID-19’s debilitating effect on international travel has helped to slow the rise of passport fraud over the past 12 months, the longer-term picture tells a different story altogether.

The public version, which avoids discussing detailed examples of the most advanced techniques that might be of greatest interest to forgers and counterfeiters, is available for download at https://secureidentityalliance.org/ utilities/news-en/entry/passport

The restricted, more comprehensive version of the guide, is limited to law enforcement agencies and authorities. It is accessible on the web page of the INTERPOL Travel and ID Documents Reference Centre, access to which is governed by strict rules and regulations. If you work for police, border control agency, immigration or other relevant governmental authority, please contact INTERPOL’s Counterfeit Currency and Security Documents Branch for more details: CCSD@interpol.int

Guiding Light is Big Business

Snap Inc, the NYSE-listed software company behind photo messaging app Snapchat, is to acquire UK-based WaveOptics (see HN May 2021) in a deal reportedly worth more than $500 million. WaveOptics makes optical waveguides for augmented reality (AR) hardware. The optics technology features in Snap's latest generation of ‘Spectacles’ AR glasses, which are aimed at content creators rather than consumers.

The deal marks Snap’s first foray into manufacturing, as the Santa Monica firm has – until now – outsourced production of its own AR glasses to various partners. Commenting on the acquisition in an interview with US television channel CNBC, Snap’s CEO Evan Spiegel said: ‘we’ve been working with WaveOptics for many years on waveguides. These are really sophisticated and complex components’.

Spiegel pointed out the complexities involved in improving key aspects like increasing the field of view and brightness of AR glasses while reducing power consumption and weight.

Large eye-box

Founded by Sumanta Talukdar and David Grey in 2014, WaveOptics has developed AR lenses and light projectors based around diffractive waveguides.

By using only two distinct diffraction regions – an input grating where light from the light engine is first coupled into the waveguide, and an output structure consisting of a 2D array of nanostructures – the WaveOptics approach shrinks the overall weight and size of AR glasses.

Most conventional designs require three gratings, whereas the WaveOptics approach means that its output structure can be larger – with wearers benefitting from a larger ‘eye-box’, the technical term for the region in front of the eye in which a viewable image is formed.

‘With a large eye-box and a wide field of view, WaveOptics’ diffractive waveguides seamlessly combine real and virtual worlds,’ states the firm. ‘Crisp text and imagery are projected by our near-eye displays, presenting computer images which overlay the real world.’

Known as 2D pupil expansion, the technology is also able to accommodate the varying head sizes and eye separations of different individuals.

Key partners

In the development of those components, WaveOptics has collaborated closely with major glass firms Corning and Schott, who produce the high-index glass material on which the company’s AR waveguides are based.

WaveOptics has said previously that the flatness, refractive index, and parallelism of the waveguide glass produced by Corning are all crucial for ensuring image quality with low scatter and high contrast.

Other key partners include Chinese original design manufacturer Goertek, and the major Taipei manufacturing services companies Compal and Wistron.

Earlier this year WaveOptics said it had teamed up with 3D-printed optics specialist Luxexcel to create augmented reality (AR) glasses that can be tailored to an individual’s eyesight prescription.

The two firms then revealed a module showing off the technology at SPIE’s AR/ VR/MR Digital Forum event in March. ‘The module enables technology companies to manufacture AR prescription eyewear in a normal form factor similar to today’s conventional eyewear,’ said WaveOptics and Luxexcel.

The editorial team welcomes your news, contributions and comments. Please send these to publications@recon-intl.com

1B The Beacon, Beaufront Park, Anick Road, Hexham, Northumberland, NE46 4TU, UK Tel: +44 (0)1932 785 680 www.holography-news.com

Steve McGrew – Jack of Many Trades and a Master of One

Stephen Paul McGrew was born 6 September 1945 in Chicago, Illinois and died 13 June 2021 at home with his family in Spokane, Washington.

In his own words Steve believed that ‘if we have a purpose in this life, it is to bring new things into existence: to do art, to invent, to think new thoughts, to teach, to build, and to understand.’

He considered himself to be part of the second wave of holography – following in the footsteps of the ‘pioneers’ (Gabor, Lippman, Rogers, Lohmann and Kock) and the post-laser ‘settlers’ (Leith, Upatnieks, Denisyuk and then Stroke and Benton)1

He first learnt about holography from a Science News article, then from a Scientific American article and was initially drawn to holography through its possible application to coherent optical computing. In 1975 he moved to Amsterdam and set up Europlex Holographics with three friends, where he made multiplex holograms on the machine he built in a wine cellar.

IHMA Patent Newsletter

The patenting process is designed to allow companies that innovate to reap a fair return on the investment they put into research and development. An important part of the process is the preparation and filing of the patent specification, which is a legal document.

The process often starts with a patent search to establish what has already been patented and whether the new invention is truly innovative. To give companies involved in holography an opportunity to read through a curated list of patents that have been recently published and granted, the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA) has organised for a patent bulletin called the ‘IHMA Patent Newsletter’ to be circulated to IHMA members.

He was the archetypal polymath, mastering the techniques of watercolour painting, boat building, wood carving, blacksmithing and knife making, authoring papers on an image feedback computer and a genetic algorithm software package and – of most interest to this readership – widely regarded as the inventor of 2D/3D holography. From correspondence with people who worked with Steve and from his own pen I have pulled together what I hope will be a fitting tribute to his work and impact on holography.

After Europlex folded, he returned to the US and worked in quick succession for Holex Corporation and then Holotron and Holosonics. He purchased the holography equipment from their bankruptcy sales and began making photoresist hologram masters and sending them to the Diffraction Company for embossing. He demonstrated the feasibility of embossed holograms to the video games company Atari and started the Cosmos project for using holographic imagery on games consoles2

But it was the ET project with Hershey’s (one of the largest chocolate manufacturers in the world) that really launched the 2D/3D sticker market. It gave Steve the finance to hire a few local staff to randomise the ET stickers and ship them off for inclusion in packages of Reese’s Pieces.

1 https://sep.yimg.com/ty/cdn/yhst-17797617870419/XX_My_reflections_on_holography.pdf

2 https://sep.yimg.com/ty/cdn/yhst-17797617870419/holosphereCosmos.pdf

The IHMA Patent Newsletter covers worldwide patent applications and is sorted into different categories including security holograms, decorative holograms, holography techniques and processes, displays, and recording and memory – although some patents might be listed under several separate categories.

The abstract from each patent is given and full patent information is tabulated at the end of the newsletter. Each month a different patent is singled out for special attention based on its potential impact on the industry.

The IHMA Patent Newsletter is a limited circulation document, receipt of which is a benefit of membership of the IHMA. To review this and the other benefits of membership, visit https://ihma.org/ about-us/#join-us.

Steve McGrew (© Spokesman Review).

Combining Optical Technologies for Greater Banknote Protection

In the previous episode of this series on optical anti-counterfeiting devices on secure documents, we looked at how the control of diffracted and reflected light have been combined to good effect in Azerbaijan’s renewed 50 manat note (Education and the Future) and in the Bank of England’s new polymer ‘Alan Turing’ £50 (see HN April 2021).

The Turing £50 note entered circulation on 22 June 2021 with the accompanying press release noting the note’s ‘metallic hologram which changes between the words ‘Fifty’ and ‘Pounds’ when the note is tilted’ and ‘a silver foil patch with a 3D image of the Coronation Crown’ – a clear indication that holographic and other optical effects remain a principal first level deterrent on banknotes. Also featured on the note is a red foil patch containing the letters ‘AT’ is based on the image of a sunflower head linked to Turing’s morphogenetic work in later life.

Even more recently, the Bank of Albania launched into circulation the highest denomination of the Lekë in general circulation – the 10,000 Lekë – on 30 June.

The note bears the symbols of the country’s national identity, accompanied by the author of the national anthem Aleksander Staver Drenova (Asdreni).

Like the 5,000 Lekë, the 10,000 Lekë has a sophisticated stripe displaying multiple optical effects created with the KINEGRAM® technology. The stripe is applied in register to the print and is partially metallised in multiple patch-like shapes, in keeping with the ‘state-of-the-art’ in the banknote industry.

The approach of presenting ‘familiar’ cues, such as colour variations, obscuration, perspective and motion parallax attract the attention of the viewer so that the brain’s visual processing synthesises the sometimes-conflicting inputs to a single consistent map of the scene.

A good example of this is the RollingStar® LEAD ‘Mix’ from Louisenthal on the 50 Manat. The foil incorporates micromirror features, state-of-the-art holograms, colour shift thin film technology, 3D flip and dynamic effects.

At the top of the foil stripe, a metallic surface relief motif ‘flip’ effect, created with micromirrors, alternates between the denomination numeral and the manat symbol. Underneath that, the stairs are depicted in a holographic and micromirror spectrum displaying the Bank’s ‘AMB’ signage and the number 50.

At the top of the diffractive KINEGRAM® stripe, the Bank of Albania’s main building is depicted and displays both an achromatic and a colourful diffractive watermark effect, ie., the contrast of the colours and grayscale tones reverses when the banknote is rotated. The most striking effect of the diffractive stripe is a true colour portrait of Asdreni surrounded by an outline displaying a strong pumping movement. The portrait corresponds with the printed portrait of this banknote denomination. Additionally, fine line movements starting on the lower half of the foil feature are combined with a clearly visible image flip between the words ‘DHJETË MIJË’ and the denomination number ‘10000’, for instinctive recognition and authentication. At the bottom of the stripe, and referring to Asdreni’s work, are a three-dimensional feather and an open book, surrounded by a brightly shining colourful outline effect, which appears in rainbow colours when tilting the banknote.

What is interesting across the Azerbaijani, English and Albanian banknotes featured above is the strategy deployed in creating optical features that are simultaneously familiar and eye catching. It’s as though, at a visual perception level, the features present visual cues that deploy highly developed cognitive visual processes to give a fuller interpretation of the scene under inspection – in this case the flat surface of a banknote.

But perhaps the most eye-catching feature within the stripe is the animated image of a person walking, the detailed movements of which can be seen at the bottom of the foil stripe when the note is tilted. In this animated effect, the person appears to walk while at the same time the colour also changes from green-to-gold. Similarly, on the Turing £50 note there is a large see-through window and colour foil stripe based on KINEGRAM Colors® from KURZ – that is shown in green, gold and metallic colours on the front and red and silver on the back, visible through the clear window.

On the front, at the top of the stripe, is the royal crown expressed in a 3D relief effect, whereby the crown seems to be protruding from the surface, while in fact it is an optical effect, being completely flat to the touch. Behind the crown are individual dynamic colors. At the bottom of the stripe the words ‘Fifty’ and ‘Pounds’ flip between one word and the other as the note is tilted. No longer is it enough to rely on a single optical technology, such as a hologram, to provide sufficient deterrence to the counterfeiter or to provide sufficient visual activity to attract and hold the attention of the viewer. At some point, with the addition of layer upon layer of rotating, translating, colour changing and movement in and out of the plane of the paper the visual cortex is going to reach a saturation point, but at least for the foreseeable future these combinations of effects are keeping banknotes safe.

10,000 Lekë – Front © the Bank of Albania

10,000 Lekë – Reverse © the Bank of Albania

News in Brief

Glasses-Free Holographic Surgical LaunchedSimulator

Xenco Medical has unveiled HoloMedX, a glasses-free holographic surgical simulation platform which allows users to simulate an entire spine surgery in holographic space, without the need for any headgear or glasses.

Integrated with a Looking Glass light field display (see HN January 2021), the simulation platform instantly translates DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) data such as CT and MRI scans into a detailed, interactive holographic reconstruction.

The HoloMedX platform by Xenco Medical instantly adjusts the holographic scene to allow for glasses-free holographic viewing and interactivity by multiple users, simultaneously.

Featuring a library of holographic implants based on Xenco Medical’s actual spinal implants, the platform enables users to manipulate holographic anatomy and the holographic implants with air controllers modelled after Xenco Medical’s disposable surgical instruments.

HoloMedX is described as a transformative step in patient engagement and surgical training, enabling a rich dialogue between patients and their physicians. The glassesfree nature of HoloMedX allows groups of users to visualise and engage with the holographic anatomy simultaneously, allowing for collaboration without the barrier of headgear.

Xenco Medical founder and CEO Jason Haider said: ‘As a patient-centric company, we’ve made an outsized commitment to developing technologies that address the entire spectrum of a patient’s surgical experience. By developing HoloMedX, the first glasses-free holographic surgical simulation platform, we’re excited to offer patients an immersive opportunity to explore their own anatomy in holographic space while enhancing their surgeon’s ability to educate them by simulating surgery in front of them.’

The holographic platform offers users the opportunity to visualise and interact with a patient’s spinal anatomy as a volumetric object, rather than a 2-dimensional data set. As a pioneering educational tool for non-diagnostic use, HoloMedX affords users with an enhanced spatial experience of unique anatomy as well as the ways in which various Xenco Medical implants interact with each spine in holographic space. The holographic implant library in HoloMedX is based on Xenco Medical’s single-use spinal implant systems, the first polymer-based devices of their kind.

Fake Holograms Found on Liquor Bottles

Police recently seized hundreds of cartons of illicit liquor in Fatehabad and Rohtak in the Indian state of Haryana. Police also recovered 894 holograms of different brands of alcohol from the two locations.

It is now learnt that 870 out of the 894 holograms were fake. Most of the fake holograms belong to liquor brands of the distillery ADS Spirits Pvt Ltd.

Of the 894 excise adhesive labels containing holograms, 440 were for Moonwalk, an Indian-made foreign brand owned by ADS Spirits, according to a report. They were sent to the Security Printing Press in Hyderabad for testing. All were found to be ‘not genuine’. In addition, 231 holograms of Asli Santra, a domestic liquor brand of ADS Spirits, were also found to be ‘not genuine’.

Police recovered 85 labels of another domestic liquor brand of Shahnai. However, only two of these were found to be genuine. Similarly, 24 labels of the Fresh Malta brand, owned by ADS Spirits, were sent for testing. Of them, two were found to be ‘not genuine’.

The relevant government department has received reports from the Security Printing Press and is waiting for the police to complete their investigation. Once the department receives the report, follow-up action will be taken, a senior official said.

SKT Signs MR Reality Deal With 3D Studio

SK Telecom (SKT) has acquired a stake in 3D video production company Vive Studios to strengthen its portfolio of mixed reality (MR) content, demand for which is forecast to increase as 5G connections grow.

SKT’s Metaverse Co head Jeon Jin-soo claims that Vive Studios brings access to the best 3D-based computer-generated image and immersive content capabilities in South Korea.

SKT has also partnered with local developer Pixelity Gamest to release a dedicated VR title for Oculus Quest headsets, as part of an effort to enter the global gaming market.

Holograms Help Seal Vaccination Cards

The City of Quezon (QC) in the Philippines has begun distributing vaccination cards with tamper-proof holographic seals to residents who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

‘Apart from a vaccination certificate for travel or work, the tamper-proof security seal guarantees that vaccination cards, presented for whatever purpose, are genuine,’ QC Mayor Joy Belmonte said in a statement.

According to the QC government, the potential for fraud has increased as more incentives such as discounts and free products are now offered to fully vaccinated citizens.

The hologram seal on QC vaccination cards will be countersigned by an authorised representative of Task Force Vax to Normal.

‘Now that inter-zonal travel for fully vaccinated individuals is being relaxed and more merchants are offering discounts to vaccinated individuals, our goal is to ensure that our QC citizens will have easier access to places and services,’ Belmonte said.

Quezon City Vax to Normal Co-Chair Joseph Juico said that vaccine cards were originally only for information related to vaccinated individuals, but were subsequently made more secure as the cards will be used for other purposes.

‘Given the delay in the roll-out of vaccine passes or a centralised vaccination certification system by the national government, we are in the interim, putting in place measures to make the vaccination cards more secure, especially for those requiring this for travel, work, and other purposes,’ he stated.

The operator stated it aims to combine real-time 3D imaging technology and visual effects to create a more realistic experience in the virtual world.

Financial details and terms were not disclosed, though Vive Studios said it expects the deal to support its global market expansion plans.

The Mayor also suggested that valid photobearing IDs of fully vaccinated persons be presented to restaurants, shops and malls along with the cards to ensure that these cards are not passed on to unvaccinated persons in attempts to claim incentives or for travel purposes. The local government will also affix security seals to the cards of at least 240,000 citizens who received their second doses before the rollout of the security seal.

The Enduring Case for True Colour Holography

By Prof Hans Bjelkhagen

After seeing the ‘Bringing the Artefacts Back to the People’ exhibition (see HN June 2009), Alkis Lembesis and Andreas Sarakinos at the Hellenic Institute of Holography (HiH) in Greece started developing moveable equipment for recording colour holograms in museums. With the new equipment, HiH recorded many of the famous Fabergé Eggs in St Petersburg. By virtue of their scarcity and value, these artefacts were not possible to bring to a recording holography lab like the OpTIC in Wales (see HN June 2021).

Some of the Eggs belonged to Malcolm Forbes (publisher of Forbes magazine) in New York but were returned to St Petersburg by Russian energy tycoon Victor Vekselberg, who bought Forbes’ large private collection of Fabergé Imperial Easter Eggs for about $120 million. These Fabergé Egg OptoClones have been exhibited in Russia and in Greece but not in the USA. HiH trademarked the term OptoCloneTM (EU-013865951) to describe analogue Denisyuk colour holograms that provided ultra-realistic images when illuminated with their proprietary HoLoFoSTM. The Fabergé Optoclones were very well received in Russia, including by Kremlin politicians and won the IHMA ‘Best of Year’ 2015 Award.

The Bay Tree

There is little doubt that the main applications of commercial holography are in anti-counterfeiting and holographic optical elements (HOEs). To date, display holography has never really succeeded in being accepted in advertising and point of purchase (POP) displays. Perfect colour photographs are preferred and used for these applications.

A perfect 2D colour image is less expensive and has more impact than a monochrome green 3D image, which is difficult to display and expensive to record. It is only where a colour hologram can provide something beyond what a perfect colour photograph has to offer that you may find applications. There is no doubt that an OptoClone of a rare and unique artefact is something no other imaging technique can compete with. Here, we find applications for museum exhibitions. But very expensive products could be on display at, for instance, jewellery shop windows (often the products are removed during the night), at airports, in hotel lobbies, in transport hubs… in the form of OptoClones without risking theft of the real product.

With perfect colour rendering (which requires more than three laser wavelengths), there are many possibilities for recording and exhibiting unique and rare artefacts world-wide. Not only 3D objects but also oil paintings, which mean that holographic reproductions can be of outstanding quality. A collection of the most famous oil paintings in the world

could be on display in a single museum in the form of OptoClone reproductions. This type of exhibition could even take place simultaneously in different museums in the world.

But it is a long way to get there. The problem is that, currently, the recording and display of OptoClones are very expensive. You need the recording materials (the panchromatic ultra-fine-grain silverhalide glass plates) and there are not many institutes or companies which can record OptoClones.

There is no doubt that where it is possible to perfectly record reflected light off an object, store it and then replay that light without having the object present, such an imaging technique will have applications. To the viewer it is not possible to know whether he/she is viewing the object itself or only an image of it. We have succeeded very well in recording and replaying acoustic waves (eg. music). But with visible electromagnetic waves (light) it is much more difficult.

Fabergé Egg OptoClone on display (© Alkis Lembesis, HiH).

OptoClone recording principle in a museum (© Andreas Sarakinos HiH).

Latest Holographic Solutions from OpSec

OpSec Security, specialist in on-product and online product authentication and brand protection, has launched OpSec® KeyCode, a so-called first-of-its-kind holographic two-factor authentication label that protects brands from counterfeiting and grey market sales.

KeyCode is suited for manufacturers adopting a digital identity programme to better defend their intellectual property. KeyCode has been developed especially for products sold, such as like consumer goods, electronics, and automotive parts, where product authenticity is critical to health and safety, but which can be challenging to manage.

‘The challenges manufacturers face in securing digital identities have become more sophisticated, requiring an advanced solution to ensure product authentication.

SmartCheck is integrated with OpSec’s suite of proprietary high security and brand protection technologies. Using the OpSec Insight mobile app, field inspectors can scan the SmartCheck enabled OVD and receive instant authenticity validation without the need for security feature training or specialist hardware.

OpSec KeyCode (© OpSec).

This patented innovation creates a holographic image out of each authentication code, which makes it virtually impossible for counterfeiters to replicate, and for product diverters to remove.

OpSec KeyCode labels secure digital identity through two-factor authentication via a unique serial number along with a random three-letter suffix. However, KeyCode transforms that random three letter authentication code into a 3-channel hologram, to provide enhanced on-product brand authentication and irreplicable digital identity.

With the release of OpSec KeyCode, we are the premier industry partner to provide this added layer of security that also integrates into an existing Optically Variable Device (OVD) structure as a standalone technology’ said Jim Keller, Global VP of Technology and Operations at OpSec Security.

‘To achieve this level of protection with any other supplier, two separate labels would be necessary’, he added. ‘OpSec KeyCode is the single most cost effective and secure on-product unique identifier available in the marketplace today.’

AI-driven authenticationsmartphone

The company has also launched OpSec® SmartCheck, a proprietary smartphone enabled OVD validation tool that uses advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) to offer a reliable method of validating overt OVD features

According to OpSec, SmartCheck adds a high level of authentication to visual checks, can be implemented quickly across a variety of inspection stakeholders using existing technologies, and does not require any additional devices.

It is particularly suited for organisations that enforce across a large geographic area in the automotive, fashion, electronics, consumer products and government authentication sectors. It is also secure enough for high-value documents, certificates, and deeds.

These latest innovations, says OpSec, demonstrate its ability to innovate and anticipate its customers’ brand protection needs.

Within the last month alone, it has also launched the advanced OpSec® Early Warning System reporting and OpSec® AntiFraud Monitoring service, part of the OpSec® AntiPhishing online fraud protection offering.

To add to this, it launched a suite of customisable authentication solutions under the names OpSec®, Trend, Dynamic, and Eco for the fashion industry.

Self-Driving Cars Fuel Interest in Pulse LiDAR

Holography News® has previously reported on the coupling of LiDAR with complementary technologies for 3D imaging applications (see HN June 2021). Now, Nasdaq listed WiMi Hologram Cloud is developing a 3D holographic pulse LiDAR product ‘WiMi HoloPulse LiDAR’ to further expand the company’s holographic product portfolio.

The move towards autonomous, or self-driving, vehicles is accelerating R&D interest in LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) to improve the sensing accuracy of autonomous vehicles driving in extreme weather and severe conditions. The technology is a kind of distance sensing radar (Radio Detection and Ranging) that, as the name suggests, uses light rather than radio waves to determine distances and angles.

With the rapid development of the electric car industry, WiMi Hologram Cloud has entered into a partnership with Toyota's electronics company on its onboard

solutions to meet the demands for holographic applications on vehicles. The core business of WiMi Hologram Cloud is holographic AR (augmented reality) technology for software engineering, media manufacturing services and cloud and big data.

After the announcement of its patent of a 3D holographic pulse laser processing device for optical holograms, WiMi Hologram Cloud has decided to develop a 3D holographic pulse LiDAR product ‘WiMi HoloPulse LiDAR’.

The goal of WiMi HoloPulse LiDAR is to attain a detection distance of more than 200m by capturing high-resolution 3D holographic images. LiDAR uses MEMS (micro electro-mechanical system) micro galvanometers to provide high resolution images with a wide field of view over a long detection range. Through dynamic control, LiDAR can flexibly adjust the vertical resolution and frame rate so as to allow the focus area to be dynamically defined.

LiDAR uses solid-state silicon detectors, which can reliably detect weak reflections from distant objects and strong reflections from close objects. Digital signal processing is used to determine the precise position in the 3D space through filtering, correlation, and statistical analysis. The point cloud generated by the LiDAR sensor can map the sensor environment in 3D.

A single point cloud can be composed of tens of thousands of distance points (a single distance measurement), which contains holographic data of 3D original environment information. The software stack extracts a lot of abstract information from the holographic data, transmits commands to the actuator through deep neural network control, and presents 3D holographic data.

Entries Open for 2021 AwardsHolography

Entries are now open to find the best commercial holography applications, with nominations being welcomed for the 2021 industry awards.

The awards are organised by industry trade body International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA) and will be presented this year as part of the Holography Conference, which takes place online 17-18 November 2021.

Involving delegates from hologram suppliers, manufacturers and users from across the world, the awards recognise outstanding achievement and mark out those who have been at the forefront of the sector. Specifically, they reflect innovative or commercially viable hologram products or techniques which have been introduced or launched in the last 12 months.

Any company or individual is eligible to enter – not only IHMA members – and the award categories cover innovations for the best in holographic technology, origination, display or emerging technology applications, applied security, and decorative/packaging products. The closing date for applications will be 22 October and covers commercial projects produced after 1 August 2020. The nominations are judged by the IHMA Board. In addition to the winners of these categories, the new online format for the presentation awards will include an additional category – the so-called ‘People’s Choice’, with delegates voting for their favourite nomination during the Holography Conference. This, along with the other winners, will be announced and presented during a special virtual awards ceremony at the end of the conference.

Dr Paul Dunn, IHMA chairman, said: ‘The awards celebrate the best in holographic achievement and the many pioneering innovations that emerge each year. Creativity, skill and design excellence will undoubtedly be to the fore in this year’s crop of entries, reinforcing holography’s ongoing success and growth as one of the most versatile and cost-effective authentication devices and retail packaging and foil enhancements.’

Those involved in a hologram project can enter while others can nominate one for an award if they provide details of the user or producer of the hologram. Nominations now take place online via www.ihma.org and should be accompanied by a video of the nominated technology or product (the videos for all nominations will be showcased during the Holography Conference).

Details of past winners can also be found at www.ihma.org.

Holograms Increase Solar Energy Yield

A newly developed holographic light collector is helping to increase the generation of renewable energy by improving solar panel efficiency. Photovoltaics (PV) is the direct conversion of light into electric energy using solar cells to generate a flow of electrons using materials that exhibit the photovoltaic effect. Photovoltaics is the second largest renewable energy generator behind wind, and its contribution to the world’s power grid increased by 22% in 20191

A solar cell works best when particular wavelengths (colours) of sunlight fall on it, and when the whole area of the cell is covered by photocells. However, some panel area is needed to connect the cells, and the solar cell shape may not allow all of the remaining panel area to collect sunlight. These effects make the solar panel less efficient than it could be. Capturing as much of the sunlight on a solar panel as possible is critical to efficiently harnessing solar energy.

Researchers at the University of Arizona recently developed an innovative technique to capture the unused solar energy that illuminates a solar panel. As reported in the Journal of Photonics for Energy (JPE)2, they created special holograms that can be easily inserted into the solar panel package. Each hologram separates the colours of sunlight and directs them to the solar cells within the solar panel.

This method can increase the amount of solar power converted by the solar panel over the course of a year by about 5%, which may not seem much but is significant when the increasing reliance on solar energy is considered.

Low cost, sustainable design

Designed by PhD student Jianbo Zhao, under the supervision of Raymond K Kostuk, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Optical Sciences, and in collaboration with fellow PhD student Benjamin Chrysler, the holographic light collector combines a low-cost holographic optical element with a diffuser. The optical element is situated symmetrically at the centre of the photovoltaic module to obtain the maximum effective light collection.

1 https://www.iea.org/reports/solar-pv

The team computed the annual energy yield improvement for Tucson, Arizona, and presented a reproducible method for evaluating the power collection efficiency of the holographic light collector as a function of the sun angles at different times of day, in different seasons, and at different geographical locations.

According to JPE Editor-in-Chief Sean Shaheen at University of Colorado Boulder, the collector and associated method are especially noteworthy because they are low-cost and scalable as well as impactful.

‘The enhancement of approximately five percent in annual yield of solar energy enabled by this technique could have large impact when scaled to even a small fraction of the 100s of gigawatts of photovoltaics being installed globally’, he said. ‘Prof Kostuk’s team has demonstrated their holographic approach with a low-cost material based on gelatin, which is readily manufactured in large quantity. And while gelatin is normally derived from animal collagen, progress in labderived versions has made it likely that synthetic alternatives could be used at scale.’

Zhao and his co-authors are encouraged by the results of their research and look forward to future work to further optimise the energy yield of holographic light collectors through experimental evaluation of materials.

The research was supported by the QESST Engineering Research Centre, which is sponsored by the US National Science Foundation and US Department of Energy.

2 https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/journals/journal-of-photonics-for-energy/volume-11/ issue-02/027002/Holographic-low-concentration-optical-system-increasing-light-collectionefficiency-of/10.1117/1.JPE.11.027002.full?SSO=1

Holographic Light Collector (© R K Kostuk, University of Arizona).

Jack of Many Trades and a Master of One (Continued)

There then followed what has become a notorious period in commercial holography folklore – with a series of patent infringement and restrictive practice lawsuits involving Steve, US Banknote and American Banknote which lasted for more than 10 years and culminated in a settlement worth around $2 million.

In 1996, Steve’s company Light Impressions California closed, leaving Light Impressions International

in London still operational. Steve continued with SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) projects which allowed him to pursue research into a holographic solar concentrator for space photovoltaics, the Universal Hologram Scanner and Reader and a hologram copier.

Steve retired in 2017 but continued to use what he had learnt from holography in projects such as AR (augmented reality) eyewear.

Reflections on Steve McGrew

John Brown – Founder, Light Impressions International Ltd

‘I first met Steve in 1976 in Amsterdam. I was running my rock and roll touring production company back then and one of my crew had stumbled over Steve’s hologram operation called Europlex Holographics and brought back a multiplex hologram.

Like many people around that time, I immediately thought this was the next big thing and got on a plane to Amsterdam where I met this highly intelligent American with many interests including designing wooden puzzles. I think Steve thought the puzzles might do better than the holograms.

It was a long time ago, so many memories are vague, but I did find Steve to be a very likeable and interesting person although I didn’t always understand everything that he was telling me about the physics of holography. But I did see a business opportunity.

We worked together for nearly 30 years, so there are too many memories covering all sorts of experiences to fully recount here, but from a holographic point of view, it must have been first seeing the 2D/3D ET hologram stickers in the early 80’s that were really the first major, non-security, commercial use of embossed holography and demonstrated that there really was a business here.

His greatest contribution to the holography industry was, in my opinion, the invention and commercialisation of 2D/3D holography because it generated enough commercial activity to finance the development of many holographic start-ups in the 80’s and to build the foundations for the decorative use of holography in hot-stamping foil and packaging.’

Professor Hans Bjelkhagen – Hansholo Consulting Ltd

‘I met Steve McGrew many times mainly at conferences and at his companies.

I helped him with patent issues. I provided him with old scientific publications which described techniques that already existed to help him avoid coming into conflict with prior art.

Steve made several important contributions to commercial holography. His rainbow master holograms were embossed at the Diffraction Company. Since rainbow holograms are of the transmission type, they have to be mirror-backed to be able to view and illuminate them from the front side. In January 1980 he started producing embossed stock holograms, sold through hologram galleries which started appearing at the end of the 1970s. The Holographic Sunrise was such an embossed stock hologram which was one of the best-selling products on the market in the early days.

The launch of ET hologram stickers, included with Reese’s Pieces candies, coincided with the opening of the Steven Spielberg movie ‘ET the ExtraTerrestrial’ in June 1982. Within two weeks of the film’s release, Reese’s sales tripled. The 3.5 million 2D/3D hologram stickers were produced by Steve’s company Light Impressions, Inc.’

There can never be another Steve McGrew, but I hope, as he would, that his spirit of intellectual adventure will live on in the holography community.

Holography Conference

Online™ – Call for Papers

The aim of THCO, which takes place 17-18 November 2021, is to provide an online forum for the exchange of information and experience between hologram suppliers, producers and users, and the sharing and showcasing of the latest technologies, production techniques, new applications and markets, as well as industry-wide issues that we face in a COVID-19 world.

Reconnaissance is now inviting papers covering all commercial developments and aspects of holography in authentication, brand protection and security; packaging and printing; LED screens, HOEs and solar panels; wearables; digital interactivity of holograms, nano- and micro-structures, and alternative light-control applications, as well as developments in hologram origination and production or any novel and innovative future applications for holograms.

The scope of the conference is loosely formed around the following:

Design, origination, pre-production

Recording materials; light sources (including lasers, diodes, white light, UV); delivering the client’s vision; techniques and concepts; spatial light modulators (SLMs); computational methods for digital holographic imaging.

Materials and manufacturing

Embossing materials; coatings and metallisation; photopolymers; optical waveguides and optical crystals; modelling and measurement of optical performance; holographic optical elements (HOEs) and diffractive optical elements (DOEs); industrial processes and reducing their environmental impact; holographic data storage.

Conversion and finishing

Labels; ID cards and driving licences; passports and other travel documents; banknotes; packaging; laminates; hologram coins.

Applications and markets

Currency; personal and vehicle identification; brand protection (including tax stamps, pharma, track and trace, certificates of authenticity); brand enhancement (including packaging and promotion); non-destructive testing (NDT); holographic stereograms and computergenerated holographic images; display holography for archival purposes.

If you would like to submit a paper, please send a 200-word abstract to Sam Burns sam@recon-intl.com by 2 October 2021, or access our online submission form holographyconference.com/call-forpapers/

VividQ Turn Normal Screens into Holographic Displays

VividQ, a UK-based start-up, with technology for rendering holograms on flat screens, has raised $15 million to develop its technology for nextgeneration digital displays and devices. And it’s already lining up manufacturing partners in the US, China and Japan to do it.

The funding round was led by UTokyo IPC, the venture investment arm for the University of Tokyo. It was joined by Foresight Williams Technology (a joint collaboration between Foresight Group and Williams Advanced Engineering), Japanese Miyako Capital, APEX Ventures in Austria, and the R42 Group VC out of Stanford. Previous investors University of Tokyo Edge Capital, Sure Valley Ventures, and Essex Innovation also participated.

The funding will be used to scale VividQ’s HoloLCD technology, which, claims the company, turns consumer-grade screens into holographic displays.

Founded in 2017, VividQ has already worked with ARM, and other partners, including Compound Photonics, Himax Technologies, and iView Displays.

The start-up is aiming its technology at Automotive HUD, head-mounted displays (HMDs), and smart glasses with a computer-generated holography that projects ‘actual 3D images with true depth of field, making displays more natural and immersive for users’. VividQ also says it has discovered a way to turn normal LCD screens into holographic displays.

‘Scenes we know from films, from Iron Man to Star Trek, are becoming closer to reality than ever,’ Darran Milne, co-founder and CEO of VividQ, said. ‘At VividQ, we are on a mission to bring holographic displays to the world for the first time. Our solutions help bring innovative display products to the automotive industry, improve AR experiences, and soon will change how we interact with personal devices, such as laptops and mobiles.’

Mikio Kawahara, Chief Investment Officer of UTokyo IPC, said: ‘the future of display

is holography. The demand for improved 3D images in real-world settings is growing across the whole display industry. VividQ’s products will make the future ambitions of many consumer electronics businesses a reality.’

Hermann Hauser, APEX Ventures’ advisor, and co-founder of Arm added: ‘computergenerated holography recreates immersive projections that possess the same 3D information as the world around us. VividQ has the potential to change how humans interact with digital information.’

‘When we say holograms, what we mean is a hologram is essentially an instruction set that tells light how to behave. We compute that effect algorithmically and then present that to the eye, so it’s indistinguishable from a real object. It’s entirely natural as well. Your brain and your visual system are unable to distinguish it from something real because you’re literally giving your eyes the same information that reality does, so there’s no trickery in the normal sense,’ Milne said.

The company goes into more detail about its ambitions for the technology in its recently published White Paper (see HN March 2020) ‘Holography: The Future of Augmented Reality Wearables’ which is available for download at https://vivid-q. com/holography-whitepaper/

editorial team welcomes your news, contributions and comments. Please send these to publications@recon-intl.com

1B The Beacon, Beaufront Park, Anick Road, Hexham, Northumberland, NE46 4TU, UK Tel: +44 (0)1932 785 680 www.holography-news.com

© VividQ.

KURZ Group Acquires tesa scribos

A recent announcement from the KURZ Group saw the company joining forces with the scribos brand protection division of the adhesive tape giant, tesa, to work against the growing threat of product and brand piracy. With the takeover of the tesa affiliate scribos, to be completed on 1 September 2021, the KURZ Group – one of the global leaders in thin-film technology and market leader for security elements for banknotes and documents – will expand its expertise and product range. Over the past few years, tesa scribos has developed into a market-leading digital platform for brand protection that can be combined with highly innovative security features.

‘In 2021, scribos is among the German TOP 100 Innovators and is a leading provider of brand protection. KURZ offers a unique process and application expertise in thin-film technology as the basis for complex security solutions for product and brand protection. All this concentrated competence offers an extremely promising combination. That is why we see great potential in joint product development and in the exchange of ideas in R&D. This will open up completely new options for our shared customers to protect their products and brands,’ said President Walter Kurz. tesa SE CEO Dr Norman Goldberg explained the decision to consign the scribos affiliate to new hands. ‘Over 20 years of cooperation with tesa SE, the scribos product portfolio has expanded and developed significantly. While at first it was our tesa adhesive technology that made scribos products interesting, it is now the digital features that can be combined with counterfeit protection markings. It is a field where together with another partner scribos may develop significantly greater prospects for the future.’

‘A collaboration with the experts from KURZ creates an ideal basis for this extremely creative and innovative team to really get going.’

Scribos already has more than 500 customers worldwide – including global brands such as Peugeot, Bosch, Castel, Danone and Chloé – who rely on scribos labelling technology at the heart of their protection program.

KURZ stated in its press release that, in the future, thanks to the merger into the KURZ Group, tesa scribos will stand alongside other affiliates, such as OVD Kinegram (for the protection of government documents and banknotes with KINEGRAM® technology), PolyIC (manufacturer of printed touch interface technology) and KURZ Digital (application specialist for individual digitisation concepts). ‘These new synergies will open up novel digital brand and product perspectives for manufacturers.’

Business as usual

True to the motto 'if it ain’t broke don’t fix it', the existing organisation – including management and employees, as well as the locations of tesa scribos as part of the KURZ Security Division – will be taken over and preserved in their existing form. Sales relationships and customer service will also remain unaffected.

IHMA on How to Combat Counterfeit Cannabis

Reports of counterfeit cannabis have reinforced the critical need to protect bona fide products and packaging, says the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA). With the variations in legalisation of the drug in different areas of the world, a confusing tapestry of policies is allowing fraudsters to exploit loopholes and pass off unregulated products as the genuine article. Within some countries, such as the US, the situation is further complicated by some states making the use of cannabis legal while it remains outlawed in others.

The IHMA, a trade body of more than 80 of the world’s leading hologram companies, believes it is critically important that regulated cannabis products used for pain relief, relaxation and sleeping disorders, are protected fully and secure from the threat of criminal counterfeiters.

Sales of synthetic cannabinoids being mis-sold as cannabis are on the rise in the UK, presenting a significant health risk to the general public, reports a cannabis harm reduction project1 that analyses samples of drugs provided by the public and other participating organisations.

This will become even more important in the next few years, it says, as the race to improve production and bring down costs in the face of growing demand for legalised cannabis-derived treatments opens new opportunities for consumer goods and pharmaceuticals.

Krypten Plans Release of House Notes with 3D-GRAM® CONTRUST

Russian secure hologram company, Krypten, will introduce the 100/50 Nobelists house note with a brand-new 3D-GRAM® CONTRUST photopolymer security patch for use on paper and plastic banknotes. To mark the 800th birthday of Nizhny Novgorod, Krypten has also produced a commemorative hologram with volume colour images. To create security photopolymer holograms, special materials and technologies are required to protect their bright colours and visual effects both during the production of the security element and when they are applied onto banknotes or ID cards. 3D-Gram® holograms use the ultrathin photopolymer from Covestro, a worldwide supplier of polymer materials.

3D-Gram technology creates elements with different optical effects: parallax effect, flipflop effect of colours and images, shimmer effect, micro-lenses with kinetic effect, or micro-texts. Familiar holographic effects become more distinct with the stable colour of the image, which are available in red, green, or blue.

The 3D-GRAM® CONTRUST security patch on the Nobelists house note is the consequence of work by Krypten R&D specialists and engineers to create innovative photopolymer-based security features. The result is a striking and catchy element with an incredibly simple and unambiguous identification of authenticity. Realistic images, pure colours and the dynamic colour-changing effect of 3D-GRAM CONTRUST are the essential ingredients for a dependable security feature, says the company.

The Nobelists house note, featuring Nobel Prize winners Albert Einstein (1921 – for the law of the photoelectric effect) and Dennis Gabor (1971 – for his invention and development of the holographic method) will add to Krypten’s already impressive house note library. This includes People's Choice Winner of IHMA Excellence in Holography Awards 2020 ‘Antarctica 200 3D’, which features a 3D-Gram® Security Stripe (see HN December 2020). The security stripe on the note combines two technologies in one element: 3D-Gram® photopolymer holograms and images with high-precision micro-demetalisation.

Krypten has also mastered a photopolymerbased hologram using 3D-GRAM-C® technology to commemorate the 800th birthday of Nizhny Novgorod, an ancient Russian city.

The hologram represents the coat of arms of Nizhny Novgorod and a symbol with the inscription in Russian ‘800 years’. The heraldic shield with the image of a red deer, the symbol of the city, is made with a bas-relief effect. Using the 3D-GRAM photopolymer hologram technology, a distinctive 3D image has been created that can be easily visualised in both a point and diffused light source.

The background of the hologram is made up of stylised numbers ‘800’, which display a full parallax effect. In a point light source, a person can identify how the numbers smoothly move against a coat of arms of the city.

Nizhny Novgorod 800 photopolymer holograms are made in two colour combinations. The design uses a combination of red and blue colours, or red and green. To reproduce images in two colours 3D-GRAM-C technology is used, providing more opportunities when creating design and visual effects of a hologram.

You can pre-order a sample of the 100/50 Nobelists house note at www.krypten.ru/ en/request

Nobelists House Note (©Krypten).

Nizhny Novgorod (©Krypten).

Fred Unterseher – Tribute to a Pioneering Holographer

By August Muth

Fred Unterseher, author and artist, died on 26 June 2021. He was 75. His artistic work embodied the spiritual and conceptual, creating an interface in which his audience could experience the mystery of light and perception. He viewed his work as ‘a condition that enhances and expands the experience of self-transformation’.

Fred was a pioneering member of the San Francisco School of Holography with Lloyd Cross and Jerry Pethick. The group went on to form the Multiplex Co, producing stereographic holograms for Salvador Dali. He was especially influential for co-authoring the Holography Handbook, which sold over 60,000 copies and taught generations of holographers how to use the medium.

In the mid-1980s he was Director of Education and Outreach at the Museum of Holography (MOH), New York City,where he met holographic artist Rebecca Deem, his wife and collaborator for decades until her passing in 2018. After NYC, Fred and Rebecca were based in Hamburg, Germany where they operated a pulsed holography lab with Dr John Webster and which was used for both artistic and technical aspects of holography. During their time in Europe, they exhibited their art holograms in England, France, Italy, Holland, and Denmark.

Fred continued to pioneer holographic techniques for scientific and artistic purposes, and when back in the US, based in Los Angeles, he did optics research for several scientific companies, taught at the Brooks Institute of Photography and at Pasadena City College. At this time they also maintained an independent holographic studio focused on the production of artworks.

Over the years, Fred and Rebecca inspired many people to become interested in the science of holography, and in the hands-on practice of making holograms. They taught in New York, Europe, California, Missouri, and New Mexico. In 2007 Fred and Rebecca moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico to be in a more supportive and creative environment. There they reconstructed their holographic studio and focused on many creative projects. A passion of Fred’s was drawing upon the human figure as a subject in his holograms and his copious life drawings.

Fred graduated with honors from the San Francisco Art Institute, and early on was part of the artist cooperatives Project Artaud and Emeryville Artist Coop, and became a member of ANT FARM, a radical/ political art/ media collective founded in San Francisco and most especially known for Cadillac Ranch and Media Burn.

He was a recipient of the Shearwater Foundation Art Holography Award and throughout his life exhibited his holograms internationally via expositions, galleries, museums, and educational institutions. Fred’s latest work completed in 2021 was exhibited at Currents 826 in Santa Fe, New Mexico in a show entitled ‘Altered Light’.

Fred experienced challenging health issues through much of his life. This inspired his deep interest in spiritual evolution, which he integrated into his holographic and twodimensional artworks. Fred was known for his insightful mind, wry humor, inspirational teaching, and his compassionate empathy. He cared deeply about other artists and their work and was always ready for a lively discussion about art and life. Fred will be missed by all.

News in Brief

Eltronis Protects GUN AINM

Luxury streetwear brand GUN AINM is using the technology solution engage™ from the Eltronis Group to enable instant authentication by consumers and protect against counterfeit garments.

Newly established business GUN AINM joins a host of other brands worldwide who are using engage to protect their products, says Eltronis. The innovative technology provides a user-friendly, yet innovative tool, to link products to the internet through consumers’ smartphones.

counter this trend by validating the origin of the item and building protection against future counterfeits.

Pete Smallwood, Business Development Manager for the Eltronis Group, said: ‘investing in effective protection and authentication sets brands apart from their competitors. It is fantastic to see GUN AINM’s dedication to safeguarding their customers so early on, and we are delighted to deliver this valuable and impactful solution’.

Whitney Houston

Like You’ve Never Seen Her Before

Whitney Houston is joining a short but growing list of celebrities that are being immortalised as holograms. In the case of Ms Houston, who died in 2012 at the age of 48, the hologram will be featured in a series of performances at a new Las Vegas residency.

But now, Swiss company SMD Security Printing Sàrl, wants to re-materialise the digital asset with its Icynote brand. It is a kind of bitcoin wallet in the form of paper money that resembles traditional banknotes but with the facility to load funds onto the bill and pay with it at establishments that accept bitcoins.

With every genuine GUN AINM purchase a ‘Card of Authenticity’ is supplied to the consumer. This contains a permanently adhered holographic label, customised with GUN AINM’s logo, and a unique QR code and serial number which allows authentication of the garment by scanning with a smartphone camera. On activation, customers are not only able to verify their purchase but are also provided with a variety of relevant product and brand information as they are directed to a dedicated web page.

Through creating a digital fingerprint, the Eltronis software, as the name itself suggests, ‘engages’ customers with the brand and vice versa. For consumers, engage ensures security and the reassurance that they have a genuine product.

Cameron Friell, co-owner of GUN AINM, said: ‘as a newly founded company, it is great to be able to utilise Eltronis’ experience in brand protection. Their support and transparency have been invaluable when delivering a practical and easy to use solution that is by its nature secure, interactive and easily scalable as our business continues to grow.’

The fashion industry is one of the most prolific markets for counterfeiting, with online sales making it easier than ever for fraudsters to scam consumers by replacing genuine items with fakes. With the addition of engage, brands can help

‘A hologram show is all about the imagination and creating a ‘wow factor’ that extends to an incredible experience to enjoy for years to come, Whitney is not with us, but her music will live with us forever,’ Pat Houston, the singer’s former manager, who is now the President and CEO of her estate, said in a released statement.

The estate is partnering with BASE hologram, a company which has produced shows with holograms of Maria Callas and Roy Orbison, for the residency.

According to BASE, ‘our deep experience and turnkey capabilities mean there are no limitations in showcasing artists, icons, celebrities and natural interest topics, which cannot otherwise be seen live, to create a real-life 3D production, allowing the audience to connect dynamically with the performance.’

In his endorsement of BASE, Pat Houston added: ‘we know we made the right decision partnering with BASE because they understand how important it is to produce a phenomenal hologram.’

For any HN readers that are planning a trip to Las Vegas this year, ‘An Evening with Whitney: The Whitney Houston Hologram Concert’ will begin on 26 October.

Holograms Help Authenticate Paper- Based Bitcoins

The rise of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin has relied heavily on transactions being carried out through some type of transfer of digital asset over a secure part of the internet.

In addition, any business or trade that accepts bitcoin as a form of payment could use the ‘banknote’ as a wallet and receive funds directly from its customers. The buyer would only have to scan the QR code and send their cryptocurrencies directly to the seller.

The security of the physical banknote uses 29 different features/ techniques including magnetic and infrared inks, and relies heavily on a tamper-proof holographic label as its principal first level guarantee of authenticity. Moreover, this can be scratched off to reveal the embedded key beneath, which can then be used to transfer the coins to another wallet. Special safeguards are taken in the manufacturing process so that nobody can see the private keys. The Swiss company that prints the Icynotes is ISO 27001 certified, which is the international standard on managing information security which you would need in order to print passports, ID cards, cheques or credit cards. Additionally, during manufacturing there are two representatives from two different companies monitoring each other and who themselves are monitored by video cameras.

Once the private key has been generated, it goes to the last part of the printout, which is where the barcode, the wallet and the private key itself are uniquely generated for each note. After completing this step, the printing machine applies the security label and the hologram.

On the official Icynote website, the company states that the process also includes the destruction of all the material that has been used. According to the company, a Uniqueness Test is performed at the end of the process and there is no way to replicate the keys.

Card of Authenticity (© GUN AINM).

Icynote (© SMD Security Printing Sàrl).

A Half Century of Service – an Interview with Brad Hilbert

Until his recent retirement, Brad Hilbert was Vice President of Security Products at Crown Roll Leaf (CRL) in Patterson, NJ and an active member of the board of the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA).

Q: Hi Brad, and thanks for taking the time to speak with HN. Perhaps we can start by asking you about some of your earliest influences; education, family and early career?

A: I was fortunate to have a very early introduction to the market space that evolved into security holography.

In 1923, All Purpose Gold Corporation was founded by my grandfather, Orville Correll. Genuine gold leaf had been used for centuries for various graphic art applications, just one of which was to secure documents with an embossed gold seal. Post WWII genuine gold evolved into vacuum metallised hot stamp foils and that was how All Purpose Roll Leaf came into being.

In 1984, after 60 years of business, All Purpose was sold to Transfer Print Foils (TPF). Holopak became a division of TPF and was then purchased by Foilmark in 1998. Subsequently the conjoined company was acquired by ITW in 2000 and dubbed ITW Covid.

A: One of the most significant changes was the emergence of the RFID chip and the migration of holograms from the front side of transaction cards to the backs. Conventional holograms are no longer being recognised as the primary security feature. They still serve a valuable purpose as a secondary forensic device.

Q: And where do you see commercial holography going in the next five years?

A: Commercial holography will still be a viable market space for many years to come. It’s going to change to keep pace with technology and is limited only by imaginative concepts.

Q: Which technology currently under development to you think will have the biggest impact on security holograms in the next few years?

A: Biometrics is going to have a major affect the holographic industry going forward. The key will be integrating the two technologies to remain relevant.

© Brad Hilbert.

CRL has been involved in commercial holography since its early investment in embossing equipment, initially, for diffractive patterned foils for decoration. The company was instrumental in some of the breakthrough graphic arts projects that saw holographic images adorn the cover of magazines with international distribution such as the hologram of ‘Early Man’ on the cover of National Geographic.

Today, CRL has a full portfolio of holographic security products, embossable materials and its own holographic origination facilities.

In his 50 years of service, Brad has witnessed and been a part of the evolution of transfer foils and films, from carrying metallised colours to their modern use as a transfer mechanism for highly complex holographic security devices.

Holography News® (HN) caught up with Brad to find out more about his life in holography and what his plans are for the future.

In 2004, ITW and I parted ways and in 2005 I embarked on a new career with American Bank Note Holographics which was purchased by JDSU in 2008 and finally by OpSec Security Products in 2012.

Ultimately my final career stop, 2013-2021, was Crown Roll Leaf, where I served as General Manager for three years and VP of Security Products for five.

Q: Can you tell me a little bit more about how you got into holography and security products?

A: My first encounter with holography security products was in the late 1980s early 1990s, producing holograms for commercial graphic art applications. In the late 1980s, Transfer Print won a substantial program to produce security holograms for Upper Deck’s trading cards in California. That was the infancy of what was to become Holopak.

The genesis of security IDs started for TPF with ‘thin film’ hot stamp foil coated with zinc sulphide, which further evolved into holographic patches around 1996.

Q: You must have seen some massive developments in the commercial side of holography. What do you consider the biggest changes in the business side of the industry over the past five years?

Q: Most recently you were VP Security Products at Crown Roll Leaf. How would you describe CRL’s role in the value chain of commercial holography?

A: Crown is a privately held manufacturer for a wide variety of applications servicing many markets; commercial holography is just one space. Crown’s ability to respond to new opportunities is the determining factor that guarantees its survival as the global markets become saturated with more competition.

Q: Can you tell me a little bit about the time you spent on the board of the IHMA?

A: It’s hard to believe that it’s been over three years already. Of course the pandemic took its toll initially; however, like the phoenix, the IHMA has risen from the ashes. What I enjoyed most about being a board member was interacting with a spectacular collection of individuals from diverse backgrounds with a common goal of improving the world’s view of holography and to secure its integrity through hologram registration.

Q: How are you planning to spend your time now that you have retired?

A: After a career spanning over half a century, I’m going to be spending time with my family and enjoying my new role as a grandfather.

Transmission Hologram Improves Telescope’s Spectrum Resolution

Since its commercialisation in the 1970s, holography has most often been associated with forming eye-catching 3D images giving unparalleled depth and realism to the viewer. But another branch of the technology has focused on developing optical elements to improve on wavefront forming optical functions that would otherwise be performed by less adaptable mechanically engineered diffraction gratings.

In work described in a recent paper published in ‘Astronomy and Astrophysics’1 a group of French universities, including the Laboratoire Ultimate Holography from Saint-Aubin, tested a plane holographic optical element that was to be used as an aberration-corrected grating for a slit-less spectrograph, inserted in a convergent telescope beam. The long-term objective of the work is to optimise a customised hologram to convert the auxiliary telescope imager of the Vera C Rubin Observatory in north-central Chile into an accurate slitless spectrograph.

The goal of the Vera C Rubin Observatory project is to conduct the 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). LSST will deliver a 500-petabyte (1015) set of images and data products that will address some

of the most pressing questions about the structure and evolution of the universe and the objects in it.

The Rubin Observatory LSST is designed to address four science areas:

Probing dark energy and dark matter

Taking an inventory of the solar system

Exploring the transient optical sky

Mapping the Milky Way.

Producing the hologram

The hologram, which is designed to convert a telescope equipped with a CCD camera imager into a spectrophotometric instrument, is specific to the geometry of each telescope. This is because it depends on the distance between the plane of the hologram (usually inserted within a filter wheel) and the CCD camera, the sensor size, and the desired dispersion power.

The interference pattern of two spherical waves at a reference wavelength λR, emitted from two coherent point-sources, produce a reference and image wave that is recorded. The two sources are positioned respectively at the expected telescope beam focus point (zero order) and at the requested first order diffracted image for λR.

1 https://in2p3.cnrs.fr/sites/institut_in2p3/files/news/2021-06/arXiv-2106.08802v1.pdf

Methods, results, conclusion

The paper goes on to present the promising results of tests performed with prototype holograms at the 0.9 m telescope during a run of 17 nights in May-June 2017.

After their on-sky geometrical characterisation, the performances of the holograms as aberration-balanced dispersive optical elements were established by analysing spectra obtained from spectrophotometric standard stars and narrow-band emitter planetary nebulae. Thanks to their additional optical function, the holographic disperser prototypes produced significantly better focused spectra within the full visible wavelength domain than a regular grating, which suffers from strong defocusing and aberrations when used in similar conditions. The research team showed that the resolution of their slit-less on-axis spectrograph equipped with the hologram approaches its theoretical performance.

The results to date estimate the benefits of a hologram for the spectrum resolution and have allowed a roadmap to produce a holographic element for the Vera C Rubin Observatory auxiliary telescope to be established.

IHMA on Combatting Counterfeit Cannabis

Earlier this year in the UK, an analysis of 37 samples believed to be THC (the main active ingredient in cannabis) e-liquids used in vapes found that only 26% contained THC or cannabis, while 57% contained some form of synthetic cannabinoid. Even more concerning are reports2 that cannabis edibles are being sold via social media and made in bulk using packaging bought via eCommerce sites, and have been hospitalising UK school children. Counterfeiting is already a multi-billion-dollar global problem, but counterfeit cannabis is another alarming development that sees criminals taking advantage of people who might be desperate for products during the pandemic, says the IHMA.

Cannabis packaging must comply with stringent regulatory requirements while retaining eye-catching consumer appeal. So, the IHMA is urging supply chains and authorities to review how they tackle the threat before the situation gets worse, looking at authentication technologies such as readily available holograms, which can effectively protect people and international distribution channels.

Dr Paul Dunn, chair of the IHMA, said: ‘The rise in fake drugs is a huge global problem and cannabis counterfeits are no different. However, holograms are effective weapons in the battle to combat criminals.’

‘They provide a flexible, quick to deploy visual authentication device that can bolster supply chains, helping manufacturers, regulatory authorities, international law enforcement and border customs improve their anti-counterfeiting plans.’

1 https://www.leafie.co.uk/news/fake-cannabis-uk/ 2 https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5gpnw/dodgy-cannabis-sweets-are-making-uk-kids-sick

(Continued)

‘The use of track and trace programmes featuring security devices and integrated QR codes are particularly helpful in proving the authenticity of cannabis products and packaging. This can be very reassuring for all involved as well as consumers, confirming products are genuine and safe to use.’

He went on to state that the use of well-designed and properly deployed authentication solutions, as advocated by the ISO12931 standard, enables examiners to verify the authenticity of a legitimate product, differentiating it from fake products coming from counterfeiting hot spots. Even those that carry a ‘fake’ authentication feature can be distinguished from the genuine item if that item carries a carefully thought-out authentication solution.

RealView Imaging Receives FDA Clearance for HOLOSCOPE™ Holographic System

RealView Imaging is an Israeli startup company that is pioneering the field of interactive live holography, creating a new type of medical imaging. The company announced that it has received FDA 510(k) clearance for its HOLOSCOPE™ holographic system.

advantage allows natural 3D/4D visualisation and prolonged use of the system without provoking fatigue, nausea or headache, which are the major problems with all currently available 3D stereoscopic visualisation solutions.

Earlier this year the company expanded its series C financing round to $15 million. Participants in this round included notable investors Judith and Kobi Richter, the Lowy Medical Research Institute, Rami Ungar, OurCrowd VC and Club100Plus Investments Group. The majority of the company's existing shareholders also participated in this round, including serial technology and medical investors Dr Shimon Eckhouse and Zohar Gilon.

HOLOSCOPE™ System

Section 510(k) of the US Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act requires device manufacturers to notify the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of their intention to market a medical device at least 90 days in advance.

Specifically, medical device manufacturers are required to submit a so-called premarket notification if they intend to introduce a device into commercial distribution for the first time.

The HOLOSCOPE system creates spatially accurate, three-dimensional interactive medical holograms, based on data received from standard CT scans and 3D ultrasound systems. The HOLOSCOPE is the first medical holography system which provides physicians with a natural 3D visualisation experience, allowing direct and precise interaction with dynamic holograms of the patient's true anatomy, floating in free space at hand's reach, prior to and during interventional procedures.

The HOLOSCOPE system has been designed and tailored to the specific needs of clinicians with an ‘over-the-head’ system configuration suspended above the physician, without the need for any head-mounted device, special eyewear or interaction tools.

Based on the company's proprietary Digital Light Shaping™ technology, the HOLOSCOPE employs true interferencebased volumetric holography to create holograms with high spatial resolution in all three dimensions. This unique technological

The first-in-human clinical study to evaluate the feasibility of live 3D holographic imaging in a clinical setting was successfully performed a few years ago with a prototype holographic system at Schneider Children's Medical Center in Israel, in collaboration with Philips Healthcare. The company has recently completed the installation of the HOLOSCOPE commercial configuration at Schneider Children's and is continuing to perform collaborative clinical work at this medical centre.

‘Having a real hologram of the heart in my hand, based on pre-operative CT and intraprocedure ultrasound, allows me to focus-in and fully understand the complexities of the patient's 3D anatomy’ said Dr Elchanan Bruckheimer, Cath Lab Director at Schneider Children's Medical Center and Medical Director for RealView Imaging. ‘Using the holographic system, I can intuitively comprehend the dynamic spatial anatomical relationships of the cardiac valve leaflets, for example. I can literally touch, mark, locate, slice or define a path for the intervention. This technology provides me with more confidence, potentially resulting in shorter procedures and better outcomes.’

‘Following this important FDA clearance, we are now focused on the commercialisation of the HOLOSCOPE system in North America and are planning to expand our market reach to additional countries over the next year,’ says Shaul Gelman, CEO and Co-Founder of RealView Imaging.

According to the company, its next product projects 3D holographic images inside the patient's closed body (in situ), making the patient literally transparent. This patented product, currently under development, is uniquely designed to enable in-body spatially precise minimally invasive procedures.

THCO 2021 –Registration is Now Open!

You can now register for The Holography Conference Online™ 2021, 17-18 November, the only truly global conference for the commercial holography industry that has tracked every significant development in the business since 1990 by clicking here

The conference will once again foster the exchange of information and experience between hologram suppliers, producers and users, and the sharing and showcasing of the latest technologies, production techniques, new applications and markets, as well as industry-wide issues that we now face in a COVID-19 world.

The Call for Papers is now live and delegates are invited to submit a proposal by 2 October to https:// holographyconference.com/call-forpapers/ that align with the conference themes of Resilience and Sustainability; Physical, Digital, Virtual; Innovation and the Next Frontier and Cooperation, Collaboration, Competition.

As in previous years, the finale of the conference will be a special virtual awards ceremony where the IHMA’s Excellence in Holography Awards, sponsored by Holography News™, will be announced and presented. Nominations now take place online and the deadline for nominations for the 2021 awards is 22 October. To find out about the requirements and to submit your nomination(s) click here

(©RealView Imaging).

Call for Papers for Practical Holography at Photonics West is Open

An open call for papers has been announced for Practical Holography XXXVI, part of the OPTO section of Photonics West, which will be held 22-27 January 2022 at The Moscone Center, San Francisco.

The conference falls into three categories:

Displays

Techniques and concepts in display holography.

‘Electro-holography’, meaning the electronic generation, transmission, or display of holographic image information, and the creation of dynamic or interactive holographic images.

Spatial light modulators, computational methods, and related technologies relevant to advances in digital holographic imaging.

Perceptual issues related to viewing of holographic images.

Materials

Materials for holography and diffractive optics. Holographic performance and optical properties.

Mechanism of image formation. Modelling and analysis of holographic performance.

Durability and environmental testing of materials and devices, and materials issues affecting device construction.

HOEs and DOEs utilising materials properties for enhanced performance. Improved processing of materials, including techniques and processes for production of holograms, HOEs, and DOEs.

Real-time and active holographic materials and processes for information storage and dynamically switchable holograms.

WDM applications of holographic materials.

Applications and demonstrations of new or improved materials in display holography, security holograms, HOEs, DOEs, holographic information storage, and real-time holography.

Applications

3D imaging for application in industry, medicine, education, advertising, and

other visual communication areas, with an emphasis on the visualisation of 3D digital data by holographic means; holographic stereograms and computergenerated image holograms are areas of strong current interest including HOEs in autostereoscopic 3D systems.

Processes, hardware, and techniques: new systems and applications for the recording, producing, manufacturing, or optimising of holograms and diffractive elements.

Digital reconstructions of holograms for image analysis.

Metrology, microscopy, non-destructive testing, and holographic optical elements, emphasising the application and engineering issues rather than the underlying scientific principles or component fabrication issues.

Artistic applications of holography and the use of holography in recording and display of historical items.

The Call for Papers can be found at https:// spie.org/pwo/conferencedetails/practicalholography?utm_id=rpw22scpw&SSO=1

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Haptic Holograms Add Light Touch

Holography News® has reported widely on the use of holographic and other visual optical processes in research efforts to improve the apparent realism and solidity of transmitted or projected images (see HN July 2021, HN May 2021, HN April 2021). Now a group of researchers is adding ‘touch’ to the efforts.

The system, developed by the university’s Bendable Electronics and Sensing Technologies (BEST) research group, is based around a pseudo-holographic display which uses glass and mirrors to make a two-dimensional image appear to hover in space – a modern variation on a 19th-century illusion technique known as Pepper’s Ghost.

2D views of the final virtual 3D object are projected onto transparent screens placed at a 45° angle from the projection source. This arrangement creates the illusion of an object floating in mid-air.

Hazen Uses Holograms to Honour Hoops

The team of engineers from the University of Glasgow, UK has developed a new way to create the sensation of physically interacting with holographic projections. In a new paper titled ‘Pseudo-Hologram with Aerohaptic Feedback for Interactive Volumetric Displays’, published in the journal Advanced Intelligent Systems1, the team describes how they have developed a new technique they call ‘aerohaptics’. The system pairs volumetric display technology with precisely controlled jets of air to create the sensation of touch on users’ hands, fingers and wrists.

The technique could form the basis of new ways to interact with virtual objects, advanced forms of teleconferencing, and even empower surgeons to perform procedures remotely.

The screens are arranged in a squarebased pyramid structure, allowing the 2D images to be created from orthogonal views of the virtual 3D object. One of the sloping sides of the pyramid structure is modified to create openings at the two bottom corners. As the projected object appears to be floating inside the pyramid structure, the user can reach through the openings and interact with the volumetric image as if it were a real object.

Users can interact with the virtual object by using life-like gestures. The gesture recognition system pairs a commercial (Leap Motion) sensor to track users’ hand movements with a moveable air nozzle to direct airflow to their palms and fingertips, according to the researchers.

In the paper, the team offer an example of how they used the system to create a realistic sensation of bouncing a basketball. With a computer-generated 3D image of a basketball displayed in space, and the Leap Motion sensor tracking the movement and location of the user’s hands, the system varies the direction and force of the airflow to create aerohaptic feedback.

This year’s Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony was held on 11 September and was commemorated by a yearbook whose front and back covers were decorated, for the ninth time, by Hazen Paper Company. The company used custom holography to highlight the iconic basketball symbol of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. By way of explanation to readers of Holography News™ that don’t follow basketball, the sport’s ‘enshrinement ceremony’ is a chance for the basketball playing community to honour players of the game by induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Yearbook front cover (© Hazen Paper).

According to Don Havourd, Hazen’s Head of New Business development, ‘brands often come to Hazen to add realism to their marketing efforts. Hazen Holography enabled us to simulate the most iconic imagery of the Hall of Fame – including the brilliant LED lighting of the recently refurbished Hall of Fame dome’.

Printing of the newly designed 10,000yen note, which is scheduled to be issued in the first half of 2024, has begun. The note contains several anticounterfeiting devices, not least of which is an intriguing moving portrait of Eiichi Shibusawa – widely regarded as ‘the father of Japanese capitalism.’

According to Japan’s Ministry of Finance, the design of banknotes is changed about every 20 years due to anti-counterfeiting measures. The ministry was also conscious of creating a ‘universal design’ that is easy for anyone to use regardless of age or disability.

After the ceremony, Minister Aso said, ‘we are proud that the banknotes are suitable for the present era because they are designed to be easy for everyone to use by making full use of the latest anticounterfeiting technology.’

was dressed in Tudor apparel and trained to go through a series of movementsthe hand holding the stylus waves, the head turns toward the camera and then the face of ‘William Shakespeare’ smiles directly at the viewer - that made the final holographic stereogram so beguiling. The actor’s actions were captured on a movie camera that was translated on a rail and the processed film became the input to the holographic stereogram camera.

On 1 September 2021, a commemorative ceremony was held at the factory of the National Printing Bureau, the Japanese banknote printer, in Tokyo attended by Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Aso, who pressed the button that started printing the new banknotes. Images of the banknote published as part of the press release of the event show a head-andshoulders portrait image apparently rotating to reveal obscured parts of the face as the note is rotated.

The precise technology used for the image has not been confirmed, with the press release only commenting that a state-ofthe-art hologram, in which the portrait appears to move three-dimensionally, has been introduced on the new banknote to help prevent counterfeiting.

However, the video of a sample of a new 10,000 yen note being rotated about a vertical axis displays the hallmarks of a holographic stereogram – with the portrait of Eiichi Shibusawa displaying the tell-tale motion parallax and stereopsis associated with stereograms.

If it does, in fact, prove to be a holographic stereogram on the 10,000 yen, this will signal a return to a technology that was used as early as the late 1980’s in the ‘Shakespeare stereogram’, originated in Applied Holographics’ studios in Oxnard, California, and used to secure UK cheque guarantee cards.

According to the International Hologram Manufacturers Association’s (IHMA) glossary1 of holograms, a holographic stereogram is prepared using the sequential images from a piece of movie footage. Each frame of the movie is converted into a vertical slit image and stacked against another slit image of the adjacent frame. The result is a hologram which, when the viewing angle changes side to side, the same image motion as the movie footage is seen as the frames are seen one after another.

Whilst the glossary’s definition is correct, the phrase ‘a holographic stereogram is prepared using the sequential images from a piece of movie footage’ could be interpreted as limiting the type of input to a holographic stereogram recording camera (or printer as they as sometimes called) to photographic frames from a live-action photo shoot.

In the case of the Shakespeare stereogram this was certainly the case. Although the real William Shakespeare has been dead for over 400 years, an actor similar in appearance to depictions of the Bard

But with the increased power and flexibility of image processing and computergenerated imagery (CGI) since the recording of the Shakespeare stereogram, as well as the improvements of spatial light modulators (SLMs) for holography, holographers are no longer limited to capturing live scenes or indeed to using film as the input medium.

Whilst it is possible that the holographic stereogram crew for the 10,000-yen image coached an actor to adopt the mannerisms of Eiichi Shibusawa (1840-1931), it might also be the case that the starting point for the production was archival film footage from which a 3D image data set was created using CGI and then processed by computer software to create the sequential images.

From there, the input images to the holographic stereogram printer might have been captured on film (still the preferred option by some due to its high resolution, good tonal range and lack of flicker) or on a digital SLM.

The quality of reconstruction and viewing of all holographic portraits are susceptible to surface roughness often introduced by the substrate to which the holographic material is applied. In the case of the Shakespeare stereogram this was somewhat ameliorated by the smooth surface of the plastic card. It will be interesting to see how the Shibusawa portrait fairs on the far less forgiving surface of a banknote.

Photograph of Eiichi Shibusawa by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA.

Krypten Plans Production and Technical Expansion

‘Krypten Delivers Another Set of TWINS on New House Banknotes’, ‘NFCHOLO™ technology for ID document security’ and ‘KRYPTEN Releases Updated eCatalog App’ are the titles of just three of the articles that Holography News® has run on Russian-based producer of holograms and optical security components, Krypten, in the past year. With all of this activity, it will come as no surprise that Krypten has announced plans for a large-scale expansion of the company’s production and technological capabilities.

To get behind the scenes and learn more about the company’s plans, HN arranged an interview with KRYPTEN’s CEO, Mr Alexander Lisovsky.

A: The research and production corporation Krypten was founded in 1997 in the Moscow region of Russia, when holograms were booming in popularity all over the world. At that time this trend became very popular in Russia too. In those years the trend of using holograms for counterfeit protection of recorded media and in regional programs for product quality protection was growing. We took part in such projects. Then active use of holograms in federal programs commenced – ID documents, banknotes, excise marks, etc. – where we also participated. Today Krypten is the largest company making optical protection elements in Russia and in the territory of the former Soviet Union.

At present the company’s staff is about 500 people, about a fifth of them are scientists and engineers. We have more than 80 pieces of internally branded equipment, occupying 10,000 m2 of production space. From 1998 the company has been a member of the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA).

Q: Krypten has always been known for its cutting-edge holographic imagery and materials technology. Do the plans for expansion also include an extension of the research and development capabilities?

A: Krypten invests up to 30% of its income into development and implementation of advanced protection technologies. The high scientific and engineering potential together with the laboratory and research base allow us to be the leader in the development of modern protection elements and marking for documents, banknotes and goods.

Q: How are plans to release a demo banknote with a two-colour 3D-Gram-C® photopolymer patch progressing?

A: Krypten works actively towards the development of 3D-Gram-C® photopolymer patch with a unique visual feature, which may be used to protect banknotes or ID documents. The new element has a very simple memorable visual effect which was highlighted in a new demo banknote (See HN August 2021).

Q: I’m fascinated by your work on augmented reality and NFC holograms. Where do you see the commercial applications for these technologies?

A: Augmented reality elements may be used as an interactive tool for identification of products in any field of application of optical protection elements. No direct commercial application is envisioned here, it is rather a convenient modern tool involving the banknote or document user into identification process, which indirectly increases the commercial appeal of the main types of products.

Q: The past 18 months of the COVID pandemic have been devastating for public health and business activity alike. How did Krypten navigate that very difficult period?

A: We started making masks and taking an active part in all the initiatives of Rospotrebnadzor (the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Protection and Human Wellbeing), which ensured rather low COVID-19 incidence rates at our company.

Q: Hello Mr. Lisovsky and thank you for taking the time to reach out to the readers of HN. Before we discuss Krypten’s plans for expansion perhaps you could tell us a little about your own early life, education and career?

A: I was born in St Petersburg, finished secondary school, entered the Leningrad Institute of Aviation Instrumentation, then completed a dissertation in Economics at the Financial University in St Petersburg, and then got an MBA at the Stockholm School of Economics.

Q: Can you give us some background to the foundation of Krypten and how it grew to its current position in the commercial holography market?

The company holds 22 patents, has developed multiple in-house technologies and know-how, and has registered eight trademarks.

Of course, extending research and development capabilities takes an important place in our plans in terms of buying new equipment, modification of the existing stock and attraction of new specialists and other scientific institutions of Russia.

Q: Is the increase in production capacity a shift in strategy for the company or did you simply run out of capacity to meet growing demand?

A: The company’s strategy has always been the same and we do not plan on changing it. The planned increase in production capacity is a natural response to the requirements of potential customers both in terms of increase in production, improvement of the quality of the supplied goods and enlargement of the range of products.

Q: What do you see as the largest forces at play in the technical and business environments for holography and secure documents over the next three years?

A: In my opinion, over the next three years the highest development will be shown by photopolymer technology, which will give new easy-to-read features that make it easier to verify document authenticity.

KRYPTEN’s CEO Mr. Alexander Lisovsky.

Nobelists House Note (© Krypten).

in Brief

Holographic Stripe on New RBS £50 Note

The new Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) £50 entered circulation in August and features an illustration of women’s education pioneer Flora Stevenson and the Scottish Osprey bird. It is the fourth note in the Fabric of Nature series, which began in 2016.

Launched in 2004, 4PICO Litho had established itself as an expert in laser beam-based CD/DVD mastering equipment. This technology platform was then converted into dedicated Laser Beam Lithography (LBL) systems, culminating in the introduction of the successful PicoMaster series in 2014.

Drawing on this experience and knowhow, 4PICO Litho has grown into a player in the holographic and security mastering equipment market (see HN December 2020) and a LBL supplier of choice for sub-micron patterning in academic R&D markets.

‘We are very pleased to merge our longstanding expertise in UV laser technology for micropatterning with Raith’s leadership in nanofabrication markets. By combining our strengths with Raith´s competencies in sales, marketing, production, and services, we will make the PicoMaster LBL series a top choice for customers in need of advanced microfabrication equipment’, said Jacco Houter, CEO of 4PICO.

To their credit, the technical team behind the digital creations admit that the projected avatars are not holograms, but this has not prevented the media from representing them as such.

Holograms or not, there is some wonderful image processing and projection optics behind the staging of ‘Voyage’ – also the name of the album released to accompany the stage show.

ABBA’s digital avatars were created using motion capture technology, similar to the computer-generated characters in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ film trilogy. Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid were filmed in body hugging suits to capture their motion and then a team from George Lucas-founded effects company Industrial Light & Magic designed and animated the de-aged avatars from the footage. A similar process of de-aging was used in Martin Scorsese’s movie ‘The Irishman’ released in 2019.

Holographic stripe on the front of the new RBS £50 note (© Royal Bank of Scotland/De La Rue).

This new £50 banknote is the next in the series of polymer banknotes following the first £5 polymer banknote, launched in 2016, which features the poet Nan Shepherd, the £10 polymer banknote, launched in 2017, which features the scientist Mary Somerville, and the £20 polymer banknote, the bank’s largest circulating denomination, which features the philanthropist Kate Cranston and was launched in 2020.

The new £50 banknote was designed and printed by De La Rue on SAFEGUARD® substrate and features a clear window with a holographic foil stripe featuring the RBS logo above a number ‘50’, with Ladies Bedstraw flowers in the background. The £50 also includes Enhanced GEMINI™ and, as with the £10 and £20, the £50 will have a tactile emboss feature for the visually impaired.

Ruth Euling, Executive Director and Managing Director, Currency said: ‘congratulations to the Royal Bank on the launch of this remarkable banknote. We are privileged to have supported the design of such a beautiful series of banknotes as they transitioned their denominations to polymer’.

Raith Acquires 4PICO Litho

Nanofabrication technology company, Raith, has acquired Netherlands-based 4PICO Group – supplier of direct write laser beam lithography systems.

Adding to his comments, Ralf Jede, CEO of Raith Group, said: ‘the addition of LBL equipment to our product portfolio now enables us to offer the perfect complement to Electron Beam Lithography (EBL) and focused ion beam nanofabrication. Our customers will be able to choose from a complete range of nanofabrication instrumentation, extending from singledigit nanoscale resolution tasks up to fast large-area patterning using optical lithography. The complementary LBL and EBL solutions offered from a single source with the future perspective of integrated workflow and sample handling will improve nanofabrication process efficiency at many customer labs’.

‘Holograms’ Help ABBA Roll Back the Years

It’s becoming something of a tradition for the estates of deceased celebrities to resurrect the dead as ‘holograms’ in an attempt to prolong their commercial lives. Tupac Shakur and Michael Jackson are just two of the celebrities that have had the digitally enhanced special effects treatment from beyond the grave.

But Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, collectively known as Swedish pop quartet ABBA, are going one step further and have announced a new concert experience in London called the ABBAtar hologram tour.

The Voyage show will hit the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London in May 2022 and tickets are now on general sale.

Star Trek Holograms

The estate of the late Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, has announced ‘The Roddenberry Archive’, a large-scale project that aims to preserve scripts, blueprints, design documents and studio models in a vast digital archive.

The project also aims to launch a ‘fully immersive holographic installation’ that showcases a life-size re-creation of the Starship Enterprise that’s ‘indistinguishable from reality’.

The Roddenberry Archive says it has partnered with Light Field Lab to try to make its vision a reality. It’s not clear when or if the proposed holographic installation experience would launch. Even Light Field Lab Founder and CEO Jon Karafin hedges his involvement in the project with futuretense language, asking fans to imagine being able to experience the holographic Enterprise ‘one day’.

That isn’t stopping the Roddenberry Archive from creating a full-scale digital model of the starship, using a mix of records of the original studio models, reference designs, production blueprints and decades of research.

The project is also partnering with cloud graphics firm OTOY to create 3D scans of props and scale models from Star Trek history, ensuring that the archive is more than just a collection of documents and artistic interpretations of old design documents.

Holograms and Architecture

Holography’s ability to disperse and form light into colours and images that create a heightened visual experience has, for many years, been used in architectural settings to create visually stimulating installations.

In this adaptation of Lilly Cao’s article in the ‘ArchDaily’1, we review some of the world’s major holographic architectural installations and explore some of the holographic previsualisation technologies that are helping to design the architectural structures of the future.

NHKS4220 Bar Illusion from ARTECHOUSE

In November 2020, ‘ARTECHOUSE’ transformed its augmented reality bars in New York City and Washington, DC into hologram-like installations inspired by Edward Hopper’s iconic ‘Nighthawks’ painting.

Utilising innovative projection techniques to create a 3D hologram effect, ‘NHKS4220 Bar Illusion’ brings Hopper’s depiction of a downtown bar scene to life in honour of bars and restaurants that have been hit hard by the COVID pandemic.

The darkroom experience is shaped entirely by pictorial projections rather than by the physical or material qualities of the room, reshaping the way we usually perceive architectural space.

Garage Screen from SYNDICATE

In 2019, a holographic  pyramid by SYNDICATE Architects won Moscow’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art’s Summer Cinema Pavilion competition.

With its unique shape, unusual materials, and functional design, the pavilion offered the experience of an open-air cinema in any weather, while its holographic facades, along with the Garage Screen neon sign hung at eye level, and flowing red velvet curtains, created a festive mood.

Quantum Field X3 / Hiro Yamagata

Another example of a 3D architectural entrance is the Quantum Field X3 installation at the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, which consists of two huge structures covered with holographic panels, onto which laser beams are projected to create a vibrant composition.

The exhibition ran from 13 August 200430 April 2005, when visitors entering the structures were given a stunning experience of light and colour that their unaided senses would find almost impossible to imagine. The creator of the installation, Hiro Yamagata, is primarily a screen painter, but is also known for pioneering the art of laser illumination technology.

The Snoezelen House / Aarhus Arkitekterne

This curvilinear building is located in Solund, a village in Denmark for people with severe mental and physical disabilities.

Designed in collaboration with ProShop Europe, a company specialising in audiovisual solutions, the Snoezelen House uses holographic projections to create therapeutic Snoezelen rooms for the village’s residents. Throughout the centre, nine originally white rooms are transformed through these projections as well as a series of screens, lights, and sounds. Testifying to the ability of holography to create not just aesthetic architectural environments but therapeutic ones, the Snoezelen House is representative of the possible uses of holographic technology in contemporary healthcare architecture.

Hologram Rooms / Euclideon

A few years ago, Australia based Euclideon Holographics made the news with production of its multi-user hologram table, which allows four people to interact simultaneously with images projected onto the table surface. Unlike some other augmented reality (AR) technology currently available, the system operates without the viewers having to wear clunky headsets which can have the effect of taking you out of the immersive, real-world experience. Instead, the company has produced sleek, motion-tracking glasses that look like sunglasses.

When you ‘look’ at the hologram table (referred to as ‘the hologram business table’ by Euclideon), it’s the glasses themselves that produce the 3D images. Frequency separation crystal films in the lens and on the table surface separate light into a stereo image which the viewer’s visual perception then fuses into a three-dimensional representation of the scene.

Within the glasses there are sensors that are constantly calculating the position of the viewer relative to the table. The relative viewer/table position is communicated to a computer within the table which calculates the perspectives that are consistent with the viewer’s position.

The Hologram Business Table (© Euclideon Holographics).

The hologram business table has the potential to transform the way threedimensional architectural visualisations are made and discussed. However, the company also offers Hologram Rooms –immersive environments that recreate the potential functionality of the hologram table in larger scale.

Using a control wand, users can travel through three-dimensional projected architectural environments or look at holographic products such as cars and aircrafts. Alternatively, they can create fantastical environments for entertainment, or even be used to play holographically projected three-dimensional games.

Whether it’s the intrigue of simulated scenes in controlled lighting environments, the allure of moving rainbow colours or sharing interactive 3D pre-visualisations, holography is making its mark on the architectural structures of the present and the future.

Garage screen / SYNDICATE (© Architects Association).

Haptic Holograms

The feedback is also modulated based on the virtual surface of the basketball, allowing users to ‘feel’ the rounded shape of the ball as it rolls from their fingertips when they bounce it and the slap in their palm when it returns. Users can even ‘push’ the virtual ball with varying force and sense the resulting change in how a hard bounce or a soft bounce feels in their palm.

Prof Ravinder Dahiya of the University of Glasgow’s James Watt School of Engineering leads the BEST group, which developed the system.

He said: ‘haptic feedback and volumetric display technology has come a long way in recent years, bringing us closer to being able to convincingly interact with virtual objects. However, current haptic tech often still involves wearable or handheld peripherals, which add cost and complication and could be holding back widespread adoption of the technology’.

‘Aerohaptics creates a convincing sensation of physical interaction on users’ hands at a relatively low cost. We are already looking in to adding additional functionality to the system, such as adding temperature control to their airflow to deepen the sensation of interacting with hot or cool objects’.

‘We believe aerohaptics could form the basis for many new applications in the future, such as creating convincing, interactive 3D renderings of real people for teleconferences. It could help teach surgeons to perform tricky procedures in virtual spaces during their training, or even allow them to command robots to do the surgeries for real. We’re looking forward to exploring the possibilities as we continue to develop the system’.

Holograms Are Part of the Way Forward for Personal Transportation

The IAA Mobility Conference in Munich, Germany (7-12 September 2021) provides a glimpse into the future of personal transportation. One of the companies featured in this year’s event was Swiss developer of holographic augmented reality (AR) WayRay (see HN March 2020), showcasing what it sees as the future for drivers and passengers.

WayRay has developed what it calls its Deep Reality Display®, which essentially turns the entire windscreen into a virtual world where information about the vehicle, navigation, infotainment and the surroundings can be shown whilst blending with the real world.

Deep Reality Display can show different parts of the virtual image at different distances. The display will have nearfield information providing all necessary dashboard elements on it placed at a comfortable distance from the driver’s eyes that is easy to ‘read’ in the city or highway.

As for the far-field — it includes immersive multiple depth planes full of AR applications from on-ground navigation to infotainment and gaming content. This feature further reduces disparity errors between the virtual image and the real world and results in an even more impressive and safe user experience. The technology was on show with live demos at the IAA Mobility 2021 conference.

WayRay’s Deep Reality Display changes the way drivers and passengers perceive the world when looking through any glass surface and radically transforms the driving experience, according to the company. It also potentially revolutionises the internal design of vehicles which no longer need a physical dashboard. The Head-Up Display (HUD) industry was valued1 at $866 million in 2020 and projected to reach $3.37 billion by 2025.

Connecting vehicles with their surroundings

The Deep Reality Display is a result of extensive research by WayRay. The Laser Unit creates a red-green-blue (RGB) light beam going through the special optic fibre to the Picture Generating Unit (PGU) with a unique optical system. It has a much lower capacity than other technologies on the market and fits in any vehicle — roughly 3 litres compared to traditional HUDs with a capacity of roughly 18 litres.

Passing the PGU, the light beam goes to the Holo-windscreen, a key component of the Deep Reality Display. It consists of Holographic Optical Elements (HOEs) recorded on a customised photopolymer

and functional layers that meet the automotive requirements for glazing. Unlike some traditional HUDs, WayRay’s technology is also immune to damage from bright sunlight.

Benefits for drivers and passengers

For drivers, the Deep Reality Display means an extra focus on the road with the advanced driver-assistance system, plus subtle entertainment features with no distractions. The system ensures that the driver is only shown selective True AR™ apps, most suitable to the current driving conditions.

When the driver is safe and stationary, the Deep Reality Display will also be able to show them entertaining AR applications and content related to the surroundings. In autonomous vehicles — the driver and passenger can immediately see whether the autopilot has identified a source of danger and quickly intervene accordingly.

Leading international partners on board

WayRay’s technology was developed in close collaboration with exclusive international partners. To develop the transparent photopolymer film for the volume Holographic Optical Elements (vHOEs), WayRay has exclusively partnered with one of the world’s leading suppliers of high-tech polymer materials Covestro AG, based in Leverkusen, Germany.

WayRay has also partnered with AGP eGlass, a designer and manufacturer of high-tech automotive glazing based in Ghent, Belgium. It is responsible for integrating the special thin layer in the curved windscreen glass lamination, which enables the full potential of vHOEs to be realised.

Vitaly Ponomarev, Founder and CEO of WayRay said: ‘forging this strategic partnership with AGP, the most innovative and forward-looking glazing company in the automotive industry, will bring WayRay’s ground-breaking True Augmented Reality into cars in 2023 and create windows into virtual worlds for drivers and passengers.’

Arturo Mannheim, CEO of AGP Group added that: ‘AGP’s mission is to expand the boundaries of conventional glass products by offering smart technologies to enable electric and autonomous mobility, enhance connectivity and transform the user experience. With WayRay we have identified a partner that perfectly shares our mission to create technologically groundbreaking applications. Together we will enrich and re-define the reality of drivers and passengers.’

1 https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/automotive-head-up-display-market-11272971.html

Larry Lieberman (1950-2021) – a Tribute

By Prof Hans Bjelkhagen

Larry Lieberman, the artist and holographer who introduced the ‘Canvas of a Different Sort’, passed away 24 August 2021 in Ocala, FL.

After a fire destroyed his lab in Columbus, Larry decided to move to Miami Beach, FL. The reason was that his high school buddy Frank Millman in Miami Beach had invested in HII and after Larry received an insurance payment for the fire, he was able to open a new lab in Florida.

After Larry left HII, he continued with the company Hologram Universe Inc, located in Ocala, FL. In addition to holograms, he focussed on another business; producing and selling jewellery.

Larry was born in 1950 in the small town of Bexley in Columbus, Ohio. He graduated from Ohio State University with a Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts and studied holography under Tung H Jeong at the workshop on holography in 1976 at Lake Forest College in Illinois.

A year later, Larry went to San Francisco School of Holography and the Multiplex Company to meet Lloyd Cross to learn about cylindrical integral holograms and the hologram printer. He was impressed and wanted Lloyd Cross to build a printer for him. He paid Lloyd and when it was finished it was brought to Columbus, OH. Back home, he formed Holographic Research Labs in 1978 to produce 360-degree cylindrical holograms. When starting in holography, Larry said that ‘he was going into the dark to bring out the light’. After one year the company was faced with financial problems as well as conflicts with his partners. Therefore he decided to leave both the company and Columbus.

In 1979, Larry moved to Gallery 1134 and the Museum of Holography in Chicago. There he was hired to work on integral holograms and on building an improved printer. However, it did not work out and he moved back to Columbus.

In 1982, he started Holographic Images Inc (HII). In this company he focussed on pseudo-colour reflection holograms. He introduced them as ‘poster art’ holograms, a new category offered to hologram shops and galleries. This type of colour hologram was something he perfected over many years. These holograms attracted customers around the world which made him a recognised holographer.

In Miami Beach, Larry developed a way of producing pseudo-colour reflection holograms on film in large quantities. By using a red laser-beam-scanning technique and triethylamine (TEA)-pre-swelled film sheets in a sequence attached to ‘red’, ‘green’ and ‘blue’ master reflection hologram glass plates it became possible to produce many each day. The three master plates used in the production were copied with a red laser from three transmission holograms of black-and-white painted objects for colour separation. The reason the image quality was high was that only a red laser wavelength was used with the Ilford silver halide emulsions available at that time, minimising silver-halide-grain light scattering during recording both the masters and copies. The holographic Ilford film was especially suited for the laserscanning copying technique.

For ten years the company was able to offer beautiful pseudo-colour holograms at attractive prices to hologram galleries around the world. His 26 x 34 cm ‘Fish’ film hologram from 1988 is an example. He started to co-operate with several artists, for example Margeaux Lucas and recorded the ‘Primary Man’ and ‘Primary Woman’ holograms. ‘Rhythm Leads’ created together with Wynston Gearhart from 1991 is another well-known example.

By offering established, well-renowned artists to produce limited edition holograms in the HII lab was the idea behind the ‘C-project’. This project became Larry’s main activity, together with Frank Millman and Ronald Mallory between 1995 and 2000. Art holograms were produced together with about 20 artists during that period, for example, Louise Bourgeois, John Baldessari, Roy Lichtenstein and Ed Ruscha.

However, the project did not result in the profits the investors anticipated. Larry was forced to leave since he could not produce holograms which were identical (in colour and quality) within the same edition – very difficult to achieve. The questionable decision to record expensive art holograms on film sheets rather than on a glass plates contributed to the quality and archival problems. In 2018, it was announced that 105 of the C-project master glass plate holograms and some of the finished edition holograms were donated to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

His award winning holographic work has been on display in hologram museums and galleries as well as hologram exhibitions around the world.

He is survived by his wife, Fay and son, Christopher. He is missed by his many friends and colleagues in holography. He made a very important contribution to the art holography field for which he will be remembered.

Fish – 1988 – Larry Lieberman.

Primary

Larry Lieberman (1950-2021).

Man – 1988. Margeaux Lucas & Larry Lieberman.

Rhythm Leads – 1991. Wynston Gearth & Larry Lieberman.

Hazen Uses Holograms to Honour Hoops

Hazen’s edgeless Hazen-Lens technology was used to create the play of light, in front of a brilliant radial burst of two-channel holography, which refracts ambient light to generate the impression of movement as the book is opened. In front of the dome, the Basketball Hall of Fame logo is rendered three-dimensional with holography that emphasises the basketball’s pebbled texture, juxtaposed with the sleek, reflective sphere of the dome.

The back cover also features a custom hologram to convey the excitement of the Mohegan Sun Arena which hosted the induction ceremony, mimicking the strobelike effect of coloured lights washing over the audience in front of the concert stage. The custom holography required precise registration throughout the whole printing and finishing process. The Hazen Holography paper had to be registered to a tolerance of within 1/16” (roughly 1.6 mm) on both sides during printing.

Hazen originated the holography within its vertically integrated facility. The custom holograms were created in Hazen’s holographic laser lab, then micro-embossed and transfer-metallised onto smooth,12point WestRock Crescendo C2S using

Hazen’s environmentally friendly Envirofoil process. Envirofoil is manufactured with less than 1% of the aluminium of traditional foil laminate, reuses the film carrier multiple times, and is recyclable as paper.

Founded in 1925, Hazen Paper Company says it is committed to sustainability, using hydropower produced by the Connecticut River, with certification to supply converted paper and paperboards that are FSC, SFI and PEFC certified.

The yearbook cover was designed by agency GO of Hartford, CT, and printed and individually numbered for authenticity on an HP Indigo digital press by Starburst Printing of Holliston, MA.

Hazen was awarded ‘Product of the Year’ in 2018, 2019, and 2020 from AIMCAL, the Association of International Metallizers, Coaters and Laminators, and received the ‘Next Century Award’ in 2020 from the Associated Industries of Massachusetts for unique contributions to the Massachusetts economy and the well-being of its residents.

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Yearbook back cover (© Hazen Paper).

Holographic Nanostructure Research is a Phenomenal Success New Costa Rica ¢10,000 with KINEGRAM REVIEW®

Developing new products from scientific research can be a slow and costly endeavour, with no guarantee of success. But modern economies are sustained by bringing nascent technologies to market that help solve real world problems and create wealth. Previously, in Holography News® (see HN January 2021), we looked at how the ‘chaebol’, or conglomerate, system in South Korea, with support from the government, has benefited research into holographic video and Spatial Light Modulator (SLM) systems.

The cost of funding fundamental research along with uncertain timelines and returns on investment mean that large scale R&D projects in Europe are often organised through collaborations across several institutions and countries. One such European research framework, Horizon 2020, funded a range of projects from January 2018 to December 2020, one of which is the PHENOmenon project.

Project PHENOmenon

PHENOmenon received funding of €4 million, financed entirely from European funds. The project is led from the AIMEN Technology Centre (Spain), an innovation and technology hub which specialises in materials and in advanced manufacturing and laser technologies applied to materials processing, robotics and automation. Whilst the direct funding for PHENOmenon concluded at the end of 2020, the commercialisation of its findings continues and it will take some time from the end of the funding period to assess the impact of the research.

The objective of this project was to develop a new technology that allows the use of new materials, laser technology, simulation and design tools to develop customised surface structures (at a very tiny scale) to fabricate high quality optics with enhanced properties, such as extreme light focusing and anti-fog properties, at a cost and speed advantage over existing technologies.

The Banco Central de Costa Rica (BCCR) issued its new 10,000 cólones banknote this month – the last, along with the 1,000 cólones – in its new series. One of the defining features of the new note is the KINEGRAM REVIEW® registered stripe from KURZ, applied over a transparent see-through window in the polymer substrate,for which the company’s new ‘Digital Design and Origination Approval Process’ was used (see page 6).

The BCCR introduced the first three notes – the 2,000, 5,000 and 20,000 cólones – late last year. The series is described as an evolution of the previous series of 2009, but with added durability and security, and an enhanced reflection of the country’s leadership role in environmental policy. The whole series is now on CCL Secure’s GUARDIAN™ polymer, and the 20,000 also contains the KINEGRAM REVIEW stripe. The fronts of the notes feature portraits of notable citizens and the backs contain images of native flora and fauna, in keeping with the theme of bio-diversity for which the country is renowned.

Costa Rica 10,000 cólones – Front (©BCCR).

Phases of the project (©PHENOmenon)

VividQ Teams up with iView to Bring Holography to Consumers

VividQ, theUK-based start-up with technology for rendering holograms on flat screens, recently raised £11 million in finance to develop its technology for next-generation digital displays. It has now partnered with China-based optical modules manufacturer iView.

Darran Milne, co-founder and CEO of VividQ, said: ‘At VividQ, we are powering the display revolution with computergenerated holography. By combining our expertise with iView’s products, we can offer one of the most innovative display solutions to manufacturers of AR (augmented reality) devices.

‘We sell to iView, and iView will build on our IP and sell the products to their customers. iView is behind a lot of consumer devices in the marketplace, especially in the augmented reality space. We are acting as the IP and software provider to iView, who are a big player in the design and manufacture of optical systems, including AR wearables.’

At the launch event, iView showcased its latest projection technologies for consumer and office projectors. One of the show’s highlights was the demonstration of the results of the joint development between iView and VividQ – innovative optical module designs for AR displays in automotive and wearable applications, powered by VividQ’s software for computergenerated holography.

Steve Yeung, CEO of iView, said: ‘We believe that computer-generated holography is the ultimate solution for overlaying virtual content onto the real world. Other AR display technologies result in a single focus plane causing visual fatigue and confusion in the viewers.

© VividQ.

Shenzhen-based iView offers affordable smart devices, laptops, and tablets for consumers and businesses: as an OEM it makes products which are then rebranded by global corporations for sale to the consumer. The deal means computergenerated holography – projecting 3D images with natural depth of field – will become normalised in various settings, including on legacy smartphones.

VividQ launched in 2017 with expertise from the University of Cambridge photonics department: it has received £17 million funding to date, including £11 million raised in June (see HN July 2021). VividQ has already worked with processor intellectual property provider, Arm, Compound Photonics and Himax Technologies; but the iView partnership announced at the recent China International Optoelectronic Expo in Shenzhen goes further.

‘Holographic AR wearables are the holy grail and have the potential to replace our mobile phones one day. This collaboration brings about a major technological advancement to make it happen.’

VividQ will start sharing its technology with iView next year.

‘We are pre-product launch,’ says Darran, ‘so we’re at the point of creating our first prototype, but we are expecting $10-15 million of revenue from this sector.’

Costa Rica ¢10,000 Banknote

the front, the foil also shows a stylised version of Costa Rica’s national emblem, whilst the reverse features a coloured sloth, the representative animal for Costa Rica’s rainforest ecosystem.

According to KURZ, KINEGRAM REVIEW®, which is also used for the high denominations of euro banknotes, is the leading technology for foil-over-window solutions and offers two visually different designs on the front and back of the foil. The KINEGRAM REVIEW stripe applied on the new euro series shows a registered image on the front and a continuous design on the reverse. The new Costa Rican banknote uses an upgraded version of KINEGRAM REVIEW® technology with a registered image on both sides. The portrait on the new 10.000 cólones –of the former president José Figueres – is repeated in the stripe, on both sides. On

Both sides display colourful movements on a matte background when the banknote is tilted about the vertical axis. (eg. moving stars from left to right in the national emblem; movement of the sloth’s body and visibility of a tree trunk and orchids). On the front, an image flip is visible on the bottom of the registered stripe: The denomination ‘10MIL’ switches to the letters ‘BCCR’.

Thanks to the KINEGRAM® technology platform, the foil stripe is additionally enhanced with a 3D relief effect in the denomination number ‘10’ on the front, which seems to be protruding from the surface while in fact it is an optical effect – being completely flat to the touch. The smooth surface of the polymer substrate significantly accentuates the optical effects of the foil feature.

Costa Rica 10,000 cólones – Back (©BCCR).

Dr Sergey Borisovich Odinokov – a Great Scientist, Organiser and Teacher

By Yelena Yegorova (Krypten) and Francis Tuffy (Editor)

It is with great sadness that Holography News® announces the passing on 8 September 2021 of Sergey Borisovich Odinokov, Doctor of Technical Sciences at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, at the age of 72. He was a leading Russian scientist in the field of holography and optoelectronics and collaborated for many years with Russian security hologram producer, Krypten, on fundamental scientific research and developing new optical technologies for security printing. Dr Odinokov was an author and co-author of more than 200 scientific publications.

Modern systems of visual observation, sighting and augmented reality based on holographic and diffractive optical elements.

Dr Odinokov received various awards from the state, scientific societies, and his home university, including the Yuri Denisyuk Medal by The Optical Society, the Acknowledgement from the Rector of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, the title of Veteran of Labour of the Russian Federation, which is awarded for many years of work experience, and special awards from the state.

For the past 17 years, he united the holographic scientific communities across Russia and the former Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) by leading HOLOEXPO, the largest holographic conference in the region. Since his death, the Organising Committee of HOLOEXPO has received numerous messages of condolences from his colleagues and scientists from various research institutes from around Russia and other countries.

The ‘Holographers of St. Petersburg’ wrote the following eulogy:

Beyond his own scientific activities, Dr Odinokov shared his knowledge and support with his students. He put much effort into supervising many young talented researchers, including four PhD students:

Mikhail Borisov – Optoelectronic devices for automatic identification of the security properties of holograms.

Sergey Donchenko – Synthesis and recording methods of Fourier holograms in holographic memory devices for digital information archival storage.

Michael Kovalev – Hologram compensators in optical systems of holographic collimator sights.

Vasiliy Koluchkin – Methods and optoelectronic devices for quality control of security holograms.

Away from the laboratory, Dr. Odinokov was the life and soul of the party. He loved to spend time with his family and friends, was fond of traveling both for leisure and scientific conferences and enjoyed biking, skiing and singing.

He is survived by his wife, daughter and grandson.

After graduating from the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, Sergey Odinokov devoted his professional life to research work and the development of holography in Russia. In the 1990s, at his home university, he established a laboratory of optical and holographic systems. And later in 2004, with the support of ‘the father of Russian holography’, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yuri N Denisyuk, he organised the International scientific and technical conference on holography HOLOEXPO.

Amongst his many scientific studies and developments, the following are of particular note:

Methods for encoding information in the form of graphic code using computergenerated holograms, the holography memory, HOLOCODE™

Methods and devices for authentication and quality control of optical security elements.

Methods for obtaining volume colour security holographic stereograms and reconstruction of 3D images.

‘The world holographic community has suffered a heavy loss – Sergey Borisovich Odinokov, the inspirer and organiser of the annual conference HOLOEXPO, has passed away, the one, who united holographers from all over the world into one family.

We have all lost a person, rare in benevolence and responsiveness, a scientist, an organiser who was selflessly devoted to the science, and possessed simply inexhaustible energy. We knew and respected him not only as a specialist of the highest class, but also as a brilliant organiser who, thanks to his extremely cheerful, democratic and optimistic character, attracted colleagues regardless of their titles and positions. We will always remember our dear Sergei Borisovich.’

For this year’s HOLOEXPO 2021 in Gelendzhik Dr Vladimir Venediktov, professor of St Petersburg State Electrotechnical University ‘LETI’, acted as the Chairman of the Programme Committee and the team of Optical Holographic Devices, Ltd (Moscow, Russia) represented the Organising Committee.

HOLOEXPO 2021 –One Chapter Ends as Another One Starts

This year’s XVIII International Conference HOLOEXPO 2021 on Holography and Applied Optical Technologies was held on 2023 September at the Primorye Hotel, Gelendzhik, Russia. The conference was dedicated to the life and achievements of Sergei Borisovich Odinokov – the conference’s founder and chairman for many years.

In a retrospective tribute to Dr Odinokov, Elena Nikolaevna, General Manager of HoloGrate, presented a gallery of photographs from HOLOEXPO 2004-2020 which captured some of the highlights of Dr Odinokov’s commitment to the conference and the holography community at large.

The conference itself was comprised of 38 plenary and sectional reports which will be reviewed in next month’s edition of Holography News™

Yelena Yegorova.

in Brief

Covectra Enhances StellaGuard

Track and trace solutions provider Covectra has announced new enhancements to StellaGuard, its smart label and cloudbased mobile product authentication solution to make it easier for consumers to identify and authenticate genuine products, and to make that authentication more accurate.

Covectra first introduced the StellaGuard platform in 2017, comprising a unique, serialised 2D data matrix code, tamperevidence and an authentication feature in the form of a film incorporating holographic stars or flecks in a random, nonrepeatable pattern. Earlier this year, the company announce the replacement of the barcode with a QR code as these are more widely used for smartphone apps, and the simultaneous capture of two images (one for the barcode, the other for the star pattern), enabling a faster scanning and response time.

In this latest announcement, both Android and Apple devices are now supported. Consumers can simply scan the product’s code using the app and verify the product’s authenticity within seconds.

In addition, StellaGuard 2.0 incorporates more random holographic flecks. The StellaGuard app reads the QR code and compares the random fleck pattern and count to that QR code and once verified, will indicate authentic or counterfeit, preventing the purchase of any counterfeit products.

The FDP approach offers new ways to integrate the document’s security print with the security effects contained in the KINEGRAM. Essentially, a single security feature covers the entire document with protective effects, while an integrated design ensures intuitive, selfexplanatory authentication.

At the recent Connect ID conference in Washington DC (5-6 October), OVDK unveiled an embedded FDP polycarbonate that combined KINEGRAM’s transparent and metallised effects with the background security print that told an easy to interpret story of bees in flight. By tilting the data page left and right, two bees start flying and, as they progress, their paths cross in the middle. Reversing the rotation of the data page, reverses the flight of the bees who now fly passed each other in the opposite direction to return to their starting position.

‘We also captured her audio, and we take that information and we put it into our server where we encrypted it and we compressed it and sent it over the common internet.

‘And then it’s played back onto a screen, which is a holographic screen where the video file hits that screen and is reflected back to the audience.’

Larry continued: ‘Your brain is telling you they’re in the room with you and that’s when you create presence, and it changes the emotional engagement and communication in a very meaningful way.’

In the video of the wedding party, Brittany can be heard exclaiming ‘Oh my god, this is absolutely incredible,’ and later, ‘When that surprise happened of the hologram, it was, as I’ve said, it was the cherry on top for sure, but it was just so special because I actually, like, physically saw her there, although it was just particles. But it was really special, really special.’

ARHT Media Announces Contract with NATO

with Full Data Protection (©OVD Kinegram).

Missing Bridesmaid Makes Wedding Appearance as a Hologram

In another good news story for ARHT Media Inc – a leader in the development, production and distribution of highquality, low latency hologram and digital content – is the announcement of a contract with NATO Supreme Allied Command Transformation, the training and development division of NATO, to install H-Series HoloPresence™ display systems and ARHT Engines at NATO’s two leading training facilities in the US and Germany.

KINEGRAM

New

Design Flexibility Allows Bees to Fly in Harmony

OVD Kinegram (OVDK), based in Zug, Switzerland specialises in the design, production and supply of the KINEGRAM® optical security feature that protects government documents and banknotes. OVDK, which is a subsidiary of the KURZ Group, has been providing its image technology as a deterrent against counterfeiting and tampering of ID and travel documents for many years, and has now introduced a KINEGRAM embedded in polycarbonate with full data protection (FDP). This not only protects the entire personal information and improves the fusion characteristics of the document’s polycarbonate body, but – says the company – unlocks new design possibilities.

Brittany Smith Gallant, who lives in Canada, was devastated when one of her closest friends and bridesmaids couldn’t join her for the wedding celebrations due to COVID travel restrictions.

Her friend Sarah Redington lives in London, making it impossible to travel, but Brittany’s now-husband Jeffrey Gallant had a lightbulb moment. Working with ARHT Media Inc, Jeffrey set out to create a hologram of Sarah.

To become a hologram, Sarah had to put on the bridesmaid dress, go through hair and makeup, get some champagne and travel to a studio in London at 3am. The early call was needed to match-up with the time of the wedding reception in Canada.

‘We captured her on a 4K camera from a video perspective,’ said Larry O’Reilly, Chief Executive Officer at ARHT Media Inc, when explaining how the hologram worked.

NATO had been looking into ways to reduce its training-related travel expenses, and for more impactful ways to gain access to expertise for training purposes that may be located in another country and unable to be at a training conference or event in person.

ARHT Media’s HoloPresence technology, it is claimed, will help NATO achieve both these goals.

‘We are honoured that NATO has selected our HoloPresence technology to help make instructors that are most in-demand much more efficient by reducing the need for travel,’ stated ARHT CEO Larry O’Reilly, ‘with the added bonus of reducing travel expenses as well as carbon emissions. In addition, the NATO Training Technology Conference will expose our technology to many more NATO countries beyond the US and Germany where we have our first installations’.

KINEGRAM

A History of Holographic Packaging Through the Words of John Hazen

In an interview with Joseph Bednar from Western Massachusetts Business Publication BusinessWest, John Hazen, co-owner of Hazen Paper Company, explained how a third-generation family business in the mill district of Holyoke, Massachusetts, USA purchased their first holographic printer more than 15 years ago… and haven’t looked back since.

It’s the latest in a string of AIMCAL awards for Hazen, which also earned the association’s Product of the Year honours in 2018, 2019 and 2020. The latest was for a transfer-metallised carton, featuring custom holography, created for Nordic Premium Beverages’ Arctic Blue Gin, a project made with Hazen Envirofoil, which uses less than 1% of the aluminium of traditional foil laminate – one way the company continues to stress sustainability, which is being increasingly demanded by clients.

In fact, it’s understanding customer needs that led Hazen to step into the world of holography. ‘In many ways, it’s requests from the customers, information coming in from the market – trying to identify opportunity.’

For background, he explained that the holographic industry saw significant consolidation between 2000 and 2004. In the late ’90s, holographic manufacturers were mostly small mom-and-pop shops, but that changed when larger players started buying them out. One of the catalysts was health care.

‘We set up our holographic lab, bought the holoprinter technology, hired some castoffs from the consolidation era, and set up a holographic lab in the basement. Since then, we’ve been able to expand.’

Continuing to innovate

‘The holography we do for decorative packaging and some branding is larger format (than for security applications)’, John continued. ‘We’re producing holographic plates as big as 60 inches by 60 inches. It’s not security holography and tends to be lower resolution. But it is very unique; it’s hard, if not impossible, to replicate. And from a graphic point of view, it gives the graphic artist a mechanism for providing backlighting, for creating movement, for creating a 3D kind of effect.’

These days, Hazen Paper’s holography can be seen in hundreds of applications worldwide, from product packaging to the program covers for annual events like the Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinement (since 2013, see HN September 2021) and the Super Bowl (since 2004).

Hazen.

John Hazen figured there was some risk in purchasing his first holographic printer in 2005. But, as the third-generation coowner of Hazen Paper he also saw the potential. ‘I always say I was like Jack and the beanstalk. Dad sent me out with a bag of beans – ‘grow the business, son!’ – and I bought this crazy thing called a holoprinter’. But he was determined to build Hazen’s footprint in the world of holographic printing from that first investment.

The results have been impressive, with the numerous awards being added each year testifying to the company’s success. They include a 2021 Product Excellence Award from the Association of International Metallizers, Coaters and Laminators (AIMCAL), for a holographic consumer package.

‘To magnify visual effect on a very small carton,’ the press release for the award reads, ‘Hazen micro-embossed specially coated polyester film with ‘Mercury,’ a unique overall holographic pattern, then metallized the film and laminated it to a solid bleached sulfate board before registered sheeting. The film lamination delivers mirrorlike brightness and a liquid-flash effect of full-spectrum colour, as well as durable performance for clean scoring and folding.’

‘This package really stood out,’ one judge said. ‘The embossed areas are like a hallmark and impart a feeling of luxury.’

‘When Colgate came out with a line of holographic packaging on their toothpaste… in the world of holography, the world of consumer packaging, that was a major event,’ Hazen said. ‘They gained market share against Crest, and that’s what it’s all about. If they can pick up 1%, it’s massive. Once Colgate truly validated the use of holography, things got pretty exciting.’

Another growth area was DVD packaging – in fact, Hazen would go on to create holographic images for the DVD boxes for numerous major films, including for the likes of Pixar and Marvel. But its entry into that niche came in 2004, when it created the DVD packaging for the TV show Quantum Leap, which involved a custom hologram.

By that time, however, some of the small holographers Hazen used in the ’90s had been bought up, so it turned to one of the big conglomerates, Illinois Tool Works, or ITW, which had bought up several of the small, boutique holographers.

‘We had to work with ITW, but we didn’t feel like they were using their power very well,’ Hazen recalled. ‘We got the job done, and it won an award – and the feedback we were getting from studios and box makers was that this could be big.’

So, seeing the expanding opportunities in front of him, Hazen started creating an inhouse holographic division.

Around 2005, ‘one of the companies that got acquired got busted into pieces, and we were able to start reassembling the pieces of the broken puzzle,’ he recalled.

And the company continues to innovate. For example, last year it announced that it had created an innovative, two-sided promotion to demonstrate cutting-edge holographic technologies. The Hazen team designed the artwork on both sides to showcase specific visual effects with nano-holography that delivers an even more dramatic three-dimensional effect.

Perhaps the most unusual aspect of the promotion is that it is two-sided custom holography, transfer-metallised on both sides. ‘It hasn’t been done before,’ Hazen said last summer. ‘The ability to transfermetallise a lightweight stock on two sides with custom holography opens up the potential for use in many applications where consumer impact is key. It’s very exciting.’

John

Arctic Blue Gin (© Nordic Premium Beverages).

Digital PreVisualisation Nominated for IACA Award

The International Association of Currency Affairs’ (IACA) 2021 Excellence in Currency Awards Event took place online on 23 September with a special emphasis on innovations from central banks and suppliers in response to the pandemic that will have lasting value. One of the eight finalists in the ‘Best Currency Initiatives Implemented in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic’ was LEONHARD KURZ with its ‘Digital Design, Tangible Security – The Digital Design and Origination Approval Process’ nomination.

Pandemic related innovation

The design and client acceptance procedures for any secure document device rely heavy on client-supplier interaction. None more so than with holographic devices, where the client may have some misgivings about committing to the costly and sometimes time-consuming mastering of the hologram.

Hence KURZ’s introduction of a new digital process for design and origination approval, to get around the restrictions on travel and face-to-face meetings resulting from COVID.

For a design approval, the finalised design file, as well as supporting materials such as detailed effect visualisations, can be transmitted to the central bank by a secure messaging system. Once the design has been approved, a first master shim is produced. While previously, physical samples were manufactured to demonstrate the end product to the customer, KURZ’s digital alternative provides highly advanced, perfectly detailed digital animations – which illustrate to the customer precisely how a security feature produced with the master shim will look. The animation is used as the basis for approving the master shim. A secured online messaging system allows for design drafts, artworks and animations to be safely transmitted from the designer to the customer for corrections and approvals.

Nanostructure Research

This holographic technology is based on the use of lasers and new materials that allow the generation of threedimensional nanostructures, pixel by pixel, in a photopolymer medium. It is the first time, the research project claims, that a single laser was divided into more than 10,000 simultaneous beams with a resolution of greater than one micron, and, furthermore, maintaining the quality process to achieve an improvement in the power of the lasers, reducing time and lowering costs.

For this reason, it is a technology that until now was not scalable at an industrial level. Currently, and thanks to advances such as the appearance of new materials and production processes, it has been possible to produce the same image and performance quality as existing holographic techniques.

Participants

While two of the participants, the Fábrica Nacional de Moneda y Timbre-Real Casa de la Moneda (FNMT) and Thales, will be known to readers of Holography News® for their activities in the ID and secure document business sector, several others may be less familiar. ICFO (Spain), CNRS (France) and IMT-A (France) will develop the new materials, laser manufacturing technology, simulation and design tools for on-demand production of advanced optics. EU companies Multiphoton Optics (Germany), FLUXIM (Switzerland) and CDA (Germany) will commercialise the manufacturing technology, optical calculation software and modelling solutions and provide manufacturing services to other companies.

The FNMT, represented by its Burgos Paper Mill, is responsible for assessing whether this technology of creating holograms by physical-chemical means could be directly applicable to the different types of secure paper and plastic document substrates, or potentially even on metals.

It is also in charge of verifying the robustness, as well as the scope of the security features of the holograms applied with this technology.

Benefits to citizens

One of the guiding principles of Horizon 2020 is that other industries in Europe will have access to the outcomes of the research to design and manufacture products with radically improved or new functionalities to respond to European society needs, ie. better healthcare, cost-efficient energy production, better transport vehicles and infrastructures.

Some of the benefits of the solution developed in PHENOmenon include:

Improved LED and OLCD-based devices: Better light distribution enabling efficient lighting and highquality image. For lighting and displays everywhere.

Highly efficient photovoltaic concentrators: Advanced optics will enable additional capacity to capture energy from sunlight and transform it into green energy.

Antifogging coating on lenses: To be used in vehicle light or cameras, this solution will significantly improve safety and security.

Holographic interaction: Holographic projection to enable new ways of interacting with devices or vehicles.

Holographic security features: Features to be integrated in banknotes and other documents (ID documents, credit cards, brand tags, etc.) making them practically impossible to counterfeit.

As for the applications of the research project:

THALES (France) will produce antifogging on-board cameras and improved PV concentrators for aerospace applications.

FNMT will integrate holographic features in banknotes and other documents.

PSA (France) will create completely new car interiors using holographic control panels and curved/flexible displays, as well as integrating antifogging coating in car lighting.

FlexEnable (UK) will provide advanced concepts for low consumption LED lighting.

DesignLED (UK) will provide an innovative backlight unit for high quality imaging in curved/flexible displays.

PHENOmenon.

©

A Technical Review of Common-Path Off-Axis Digital Holography

Digital holography, the method for acquiring and processing holograms with digital sensor arrays, has been widely applied in interferometric measurements, threedimensional imaging, and quantitative phase imaging.

However, in conventional off-axis holographic experimental setups, the object and reference beams propagate in largely separate paths, resulting in low temporal stability. By designing common-path configurations where the two interference beams share the same or similar paths, environmental disturbance to the two beams can effectively be compensated – making significant improvements to longtime lapse measurements.

In a new paper entitled ‘A review of common-path off-axis digital holography: towards high stable optical instrument manufacturing’ published in September’s ‘Light: Advanced Manufacturing’1, a team of scientists from the Key Laboratory of Light Field Manipulation and Information Acquisition, China and Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Optical Information Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University, China has reviewed a number of different common-path off-axis digital holography configuration designs. They have categorised the common-path models as (1) lateral shearing (2) point diffraction, and (3) other types, based on the different approaches used to generate the reference beam.

The research group summarised the design principles and application scenarios of the different types and made recommendations for the commercial manufacturing of common-path digital holographic interferometers.

‘To record an off-axis hologram, the object beam must interfere with a uniform

reference beam at a certain angle. The key issue to design a common-path configuration is to generate a uniform reference beam allowing the two interference beams to pass along similar paths. The greater the level of similarity, the greater the stability of the optical setup,’ the authors summarised.

‘As for the lateral shearing-based type, the beam carrying the object information is first doubled using a certain optical component, like, a glass plate, grating, or beam splitter. Then, the portions of the two beams with and without the sample information create the shearing interference.

‘This type has a simpler and more compact design. However, it requires an undisturbed portion of the illumination beam to generate the reference beam, which could reduce the field of view. This type is typically applied to spatially sparse samples.’

‘Conversely,’ the authors state, ‘the point diffraction-based type creates a uniform reference beam from the object beam by low-pass filtering in the Fourier domain. This type does not have the problem of limited field of view. However, it typically has a complex configuration. This type is suitable for measuring microscopic samples with high spatial frequency, as it is easy to generate the uniform reference beam by spatial filtering.’

‘The third type has advanced designs such as using folding mirrors, speciallypositioned beam splitter cubes, and Wollaston prisms. These designs could avoid the disadvantages existing in the former two types,’ the scientists predicted.

In conclusion, the researchers noted that common-path digital holography benefits from compact features, which make it a very promising approach for the manufacture of highly-stable optical measurement and imaging instruments.

Increased efficiency, safety and environmental protection

The advantages of this innovation are optimised demonstration of the effects and the design’s visual impression, increased flexibility, speedy and secure data exchange and reduced travel cost. Indeed, it replaces the need for travel altogether in the current pandemic – but maintains the full capacity to interact for both the supplier and the central bank customer.

It goes without saying, says KURZ, that no security compromises are being made in preserving the ability to interact – the digital environment for working with sensitive, confidential design data is perfectly secured. A positive side effect of the new digital process is the reduction of CO2, as travel and sample shipments are saved.

The digital data is also a good starting point for customers in their public relations materials, for example when creating a marketing campaign to accompany the launch of new banknotes. The animation is perfect for use in a video clip that explains to the end users how to examine the visual effects of the banknote security stripe. Benefits beyond the pandemic

According to KURZ, digitalisation leads to a significant improvement in the design process as well as, arguably, an increase in banknote security, which will endure even after the pandemic. By sticking to the new process, KURZ can continue to save CO2 in the future through reduced shipping and traveling.

Based on the new digital process, KURZ was able to receive design and origination approvals from the Banco Central de Costa Rica (BCCR) for its new 10,000 cólones banknote which was issued this month (see page 1). The process was 100% digital – ensuring on-time finishing of the foil design and the timely issuance of the banknote.

In support of the nomination, Juan José Leiva Cortes, Supply & Quality Manager at the BCCR, said: ‘KURZ’s clear and highly detailed video explaining origination approval enabled us to approve the design remotely, avoiding the delays seen in global supply chains because of COVID-19 and allowing us to issue our new banknotes according to plan. The process that we put in place with KURZ is for us the new digital normal’.

Concept of common-path configuration (© Jiwei Zhang, Siqing Dai, Chaojie Ma, Teli Xi, Jianglei Di, and Jianlin Zhao).

Excitement Growing for Holography Conference

The programme is set, the nominations for awards are flooding in, the speakers are ready, all that’s needed now is for more participants to get online and register! Conference organisers, Reconnaissance International, are happy with the take-up so far, but as this is an online event, the more the merrier.

The aim of THCO is to provide an online forum for the exchange of information and experience between hologram suppliers, producers and users, and the sharing and showcasing of the latest technologies, production techniques, new applications and markets, as well as industry-wide issues that we now face in a COVID world. It’s also the conference that has tracked every new development in holography since 1990.

After the success of THCO 2020 (https:// holographyconference.com/review-2020), the programme organisers have decided to stick with the format of four sessions spread over the two-day online conference: Protection, Prevention,

Perception – High Security Features in Action

Long before the first banknotes and ID cards used holograms as their principal first level security feature, holograms could be found protecting cheques, certificates, licences, and many other documents of

value. This session will look at current applications where holograms maintain their cherished position at the forefront of counterfeit deterrence but increasingly are seen alongside optical devices that use non-diffractive techniques.

From Physical to Digital – Authentication

on the Move

Pharmaceutical & health care, luxury goods, apparel and electronics are just a few of the commercial sectors that have used holograms to help protect their goods from counterfeiting, tampering and diversion. In this session, we will look at some strong emerging technology factors, like smart serialisation and ubiquitous communications, that are changing the way that holograms are integrated into brand protection and supply chain management.

Novel Materials, Techniques and Applications

Releasing new, environmentally friendly, materials for recording, replicating and mass-producing the surface and volume gratings that create a hologram are essential to the sustainability of the industry. This session will examine advanced holographic materials and processes used in display, lighting, medical, data storage, optical elements and lighting use cases.

Continuing Development for a Brighter Future

The invention of holography in 1947 was as part of attempts to improve the performance of the electron microscope. In addition to delving into direct research into wavefront recording and reconstruction, this session will explore how holography has continued to push back the boundaries.

At the end of each session there will be an opportunity for the audience to put their questions to all of the speakers from that session in a Q&A.

The long-standing collaboration between The Holography Conference, Holography News® and the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA) will continue this year, with the presentation, following the end of the second session on the second day, of the Excellence in Holography Awards for the most noteworthy holographic projects of the year. Whether you are involved in secure document, brand protection, data storage, optical elements or medical applications of holography, this is the one conference that you really cannot afford to miss! For more information and to register go to holographyconference.com or drop an email to livia@recon-intl.com

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IHMA Awards Continue to Shine in Difficult Times

Telescope Holographic Lens

Inspired by a concept for discovering exoplanets with a massive space telescope, a team of researchers is developing holographic lenses that render visible and infrared starlight into either a focused image or a spectrum. An exoplanet is a planet that orbits a star outside our solar system.

The experimental method, detailed in an article appearing in Nature Scientific Reports1, could be used to create a lightweight flexible lens, many metres in diameter, that could be rolled for launch and unfurled in space.

The winners of the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA) Awards for Excellence in Holography were announced, amid a shower of virtual confetti, at the closing of The Holography Conference Online (THCO) on 18 November, with a total of six awards up for grabs.

The awards mark the pinnacle of success for those who have been involved at the forefront of developing innovative or commercially viable hologram products or techniques over the past 12 months, recognising unparalleled sector achievement during the difficult and challenging times caused by COVID.

The 2021 awards saw Krypten Research and Production Company scoop the coveted ‘Innovation in Holographic Technology’ award for its 3D-GRAM®

CONTRUST Security Patch – a photopolymer holographic patch with a striking and unambiguous colour change in the images from red to green when rotated at 180°.

The technology was launched this summer on the Nobelists house note, featuring Nobel Prize winners Albert Einstein (1921 – for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect) and Dennis Gabor (1971 – for his invention and development of holography).

The judges were particularly impressed by the work of Krypten to create a security patch with innovative photopolymer-based security features. In particular, the ‘striking and catchy’ element with a simple and unambiguous identification, enabling the patch to be applied both on paper and polymer-based banknotes.

The judges also recognised Surys in the ‘Best Origination’ category for Gold Fish – a unique limited edition note which features the first application of Plasmogram™ Reverso on a window in a polymer banknote.

‘We use two spherical waves of light to produce the hologram, which gives us fine control over the diffractive grating recorded on the film, and the effect it has on light - either separating light with super sensitivity, or focusing light with high resolution,’ said Mei-Li Hsieh, a visiting researcher at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an expert in optics and photonics who established a mathematical solution to govern the output of the hologram. ‘We believe this model could be useful in applications that require extremely high spectral resolution spectroscopy, such as analysis of exoplanets.’

Optical setup to record holographic lens (©Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

3D-GRAM® CONTRUST Security Patch for the 100/50 Nobelists House Note (© Krypten).

IHMA Awards Continue to Shine

The feature, which is based on plasmonic sciences and nanotechnologies, offers a range of different optical effects as well as different colours when viewed from the front and reverse of the note, and in transmission.

The Gold Fish banknote has been produced by the Banknote Factory of the National Bank of Kazakhstan on SAFEGUARD™ polymer substrate from De La Rue and will be issued in early 2022.

symbol. Immediately below is colour shifting motif with micromirror animation which shows the arch of an educational institution with animated relief structures and a depth background inside the arch. And underneath this, steps in a holographic and micromirror spectrum display feature the Banks ‘AMB’ signage and the denomination number.

The portrait was created in homage to Yuri Denisyuk (1927-2006) on the 15th anniversary of his death. Denisyuk’s original red monochrome portrait was recorded in the 1990s with a ruby pulse laser. This portrait was scanned with a 4k camera, then all the perspective images were colorised with a special AI program. After the calculation of the hogels, a full colour 30x40 cm CHIMERA was printed.

In its second year as part of the awards process, the ‘People’s Choice’ vote was won by Nanotech Security Corp. of British Columbia, Canada for the use of their LiveOptik™ technology on the UEFA Euro 2020 football championship admission tickets – (the tournament was delayed until summer 2021 due to COVID restrictions).

The ‘Best Applied Security Product’ prize was awarded for Louisenthal’s RollingStar LEAD Mix foil stripe which features on the Azerbaijan 50 Manat note, the theme of which is education.

The foil stripe is the most pronounced of the security features in the new note. At the top, a metallic surface relief motif ‘flip’ effect created with micromirrors alternates between the denomination and manat

At the bottom of the foil is an eye-catching figure of a student walking (presumably to class) whose movements are clearly displayed when the note tilted.

Hazen Paper Company was the winner –for the second year in a row – of the Best Applied Decorative/Packaging Product’, for the 2021 Naismith memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Enshrinement Yearbook.

The yearbook features a number of holographic innovations to form a highly distinguished back and front cover design. These included the edgeless Hazen-Lens technology to generate the pulsating play of light feature in front of a ‘brilliant’ radial burst of light-reflecting holograms, providing the impression of movement as the book is opened.

EURO 2020 ticket (© EUFA and Nanotech Security Corp).

LiveOptik controls light at nanoscale, producing an ultra-high resolution image that appears at specifically engineered viewing angles. Nanotech’s engineers employed a complex mathematical algorithm and advanced manufacturing technologies to accurately embed over two billion nano-sized holes on each of the 6 million admission tickets. Without dyes or inks, the nano-sized holes created the highresolution image.

Dr Paul Dunn, chair of the IHMA, commended the standard of entries as extremely high and eye-catching, contributing to a ‘confident and strong’ industry that continues to evolve, innovate and secure new markets and exciting applications.

The ‘Best Display or Emerging Technology Application of Holography’ was awarded to the Immersive Content Display Center, Kwangwoon University in Seoul, S. Korea for its Yuri Denisyuk full-colour CHIMERA Holographic portrait.

He added: ‘once again, these awards celebrate the very best in holographic achievement and the many remarkable innovations the industry introduces each year. Creativity, flair and design excellence have again shone in the 2021 entries, reflecting how our industry continues to push the boundaries forward both technically and commercially.’

Light Field Lab Ship Date for SolidLight Displays

The Silicon Valley startup company, Light Field Lab, is now accepting advanced orders for its holographic display platform, dubbed SolidLight, as it starts building them for shipment next year.

The development of light field displays goes back to the early 1900s and the work of Gabriel Lippman’s ‘integral photography’.

In contrast to regular photography, which focuses light from a scene onto a light sensitive medium, light field displays imagine the waves emanating from a scene to be a field of light that can be described by the intensity of light at each position within the field and the direction that each light ray is travelling.

Unlike a hologram, that records the amplitude and phase relation of the wave fronts reflected (or in some cases emitted) from an object, light fields are best thought of as a vector function of the amount of light flowing in every direction through every point in space.

Light field displays are generating a lot of excitement in the commercial heightened reality display sector because, even though they require a lot of data manipulation, the

methods for coding the data stream (and ultimately transmit them), is improving all the time.

One company that is close to commercial realisation of light field displays is Californiabased Light Field Lab.

Their technology creates a real image of a scene. A real image is a collection of foci of converging light rays. You can confirm that an image is real, as opposed to virtual, by placing a screen or ground glass into the body of the image and physically ‘capture’ it.

To achieve the production of a real image, the company’s branded display device, SolidLight, generates a massive number of viewing angles that correctly change with the point of view and location as your eyes and visual processing system would do in the real world.

This is accomplished with a directly emissive, modular, and flat-panel display surface coupled with a complex series of waveguides that modulate the field of collimated light rays. With this implementation, a viewer sees around objects when moving in any direction such that motion parallax is maintained,

Telescope Holographic Lens

Telescopes that must be launched into space (to benefit from the superior view outside of Earth’s atmosphere) are limited by the weight and bulk of glass lenses, which can realistically span only a few meters in diameter. By contrast, the lightweight flexible holographic lens—more properly called an HOE (holographic optical element)—could be dozens of metres across. Such an instrument could be used to directly observe an exoplanet, a leap over current methods that detect exoplanets based on their effect on light coming from the star they orbit, said Newberg, a Rensselaer professor of physics.

‘To find Earth 2.0, we really want to see exoplanets by direct imaging—we need to be able to look at the star and see the planet separate from the star. And for that, we need high resolution and a really big telescope,’ said Newberg, an astrophysicist and expert in galactic structure.

The HOE is a refined version of a Fresnel lens, a category of lenses that use concentric rings of prisms arrayed in a flat plane to mimic the focusing ability of a curved lens without the bulk.

The concept of the Fresnel lens—which was developed for use in lighthouses —dates back to the 19th century, with modern-day Fresnel lenses of glass or plastic found in automobile lamps, microoptics, and camera screens.

The main function of the Fresnel hologram is to collect the collimated light source and focus it into the detector. When a broad-band light source passes through an annulus diffractive optic, the incident light with different wavelengths will be focused into different positions along the optical axis. It is called dispersion and can be applied for high resolution spectroscopy applications. In this work, the researchers focused their efforts on designing the annulus Fresnel hologram, realising this hologram and demonstrating its unusually large chromatic behaviour.

But while Fresnel holographic optical elements - created by exposing a lightsensitive plastic film to two sources of light at different distances from the film - are not uncommon, existing methods were limited to lenses that could only focus light, rather than separating it.

reflections and refractions behave correctly, and the eyes freely focus on the items formed in mid-air.

The result is that the brain interprets the scene as being real without any physical objects being present.

Light Field Lab has to assemble the display from smaller submodules that can produce the projected image. Each submodule, or brick, is 16K by 10K pixels. The brick’s display surface is six inches by four inches.

By putting 15 of these bricks together, the company can assemble a 28-inch display that can project images in front of it. It can project 2.5 billion pixels into the generated image space and scale it to any size that fits within the 28-inch display space. The density of the images is about 10 billion pixels per meter.

Over time, the company wants to build video walls with 10 billion pixels per metre of resolution, enabling huge displays in places such as theatres, stores, museums and entertainment centres.

Light Field Lab is now accepting preorders for SolidLight systems as it starts building them for shipment next year.

The new method allows the designers to either focus light onto a single point or disperse it into its constituent colours, producing a spectrum of pure colours, said Lin, corresponding author and a Rensselaer professor of physics, applied physics, and astronomy. The method uses two sources of light, positioned very close to one another, which create concentric waves of light that - as they travel toward the filmeither build or cancel each other out.

This pattern of interference can be tuned based on the formulas Hsieh developed. It is recorded onto the film as a holographic image and, depending on how the image is structured, light passing through the holographic optical element is either focused or stretched.

‘We wanted to stretch the light, so that we could separate it into different wavelengths. Any Fresnel lens will stretch the light a little, but not enough,’ said Lin, an expert in photonic crystals and nano-photonics. ‘With our method, we can have super resolution on one end, or super sensitivity – with each colour separated. When the light is stretched like that, the colour is very good, as pure and as vivid as you can get.’ www.nature.com/articles/s41598-02199955-w

Allegations of ManufacturersHologram Cartel in India

A petition has been filed before the Andhra Pradesh (AP) High Court seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry into alleged corruption in the tender for the supply of security holograms to AP State Beverages Corporation.

Mr V Sivaraman from Chennai has alleged that the companies that participated in the tender formed a cartel with the active connivance of officials in the excise department, therefore causing a huge loss of revenue to the exchequer.

The tender for supplying security holograms was floated in September 2020 and subsequently allotted to Kumbhat Holographics. The other two companies that participated in the tender were Alpha Lasertek India and Holostik India. While all three companies were declared eligible in the first stage of the tender, Alpha Lasertek India and Holostik India did not satisfy the evaluation process and the tender was awarded to Kumbhat Holographics, which was the lowest bidder.

Sivaraman asserts that, as per the tender norms, the participating companies should not have a conflict of interest with one another. The term conflict of interest, in this instance, refers to the requirement that the businesses should not have a business relationship with one another that could influence the bid price.

Though the three companies were declared eligible in the first stage of the tender evaluation, Sivaraman alleges that all three had business arrangements among them. While Holostik and Kumbhat were business partners in selling nano optic products under joint agreement, Alpha Lasertek has a business relationship with Holostik, he alleges.

Holostik was debarred from bidding by the excise department in 2012, which made it ineligible to bid for the tender, alleges Sivaraman. As the three companies had business relations among them, they should have been disqualified in the first stage, he said, urging the High Court to order a CBI inquiry in view of alleged largescale misappropriations.

Holographic Telepresence Technology, PORTL, Helps Sustainability

Bestselling author of The Pursuit of Happyness (sic) and Permission to Dream, Chris Gardner, has announced he intends to do all of his talks via PORTL from now on to reach more people safely and sustainably.

Chris spoke to the annual meeting of global hotel executives at Associated Luxury Hotels International and said he planned to use PORTL to beam into his 200 speaking engagements a year to cut down on jet travel while spreading his message even wider.

The PORTL technology is already in use in the hospitality and meetings industry where it can beam in keynote speakers, celebrities and entertainers or present items for auctions that are entirely digital.

‘You know me, I love talking with people and adjusting the way they work toward their dreams,’ said Chris, CEO of Happyness. ‘Now I can get anywhere without all the drama and drain and damage of flying - I can just PORTL there.

I can even be in a dozen cities at once if you want to book that, interacting with the crowd at every single one.’

PORTL has proven its ability to ‘beam’ people to and from anywhere in the world for interactive experiences, including CEOs, athletes and musicians. Backed by Tim Draper (known for helping Tesla and SpaceX get started), PORTL has beamed race car drivers across COVID quarantine lines (for DHL and Formula E), allowed hip hop’s Migos to appear in four cities at once, and even allowed P Diddy to deliver a stirring rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ to his son 3,000 miles away.

LightPath Technologies Adds Freeform Optics to its Offerings

Optical components and assemblies maker LightPath Technologies (Orlando, FL) has added freeform optics to its custom moulded optics portfolio.

Freeform optics involve lenses with surface shapes that lack certain symmetrical attributes, making them more challenging to mass-produce—but they provide improved aperture, field of view, and miniaturisation. Recognising this, LightPath’s moulding technology enables mass production of moulded freeform optics, rather than fabricating optical elements individually.

High-precision optical elements with freeform surfaces allow more complex surface profiles that can provide beam shaping, enabling many optical systems to be miniaturised and the number of elements reduced.

Freeform optics are becoming a key element in applications such as augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), infrared and military optical systems, and 3D imaging and visualisation. Many times, these systems require the higher performance and more compact form factor that freeform optics can provide, allowing increased flexibility and overall size, weight, and power optimisation.

Rob Myers, a product manager at LightPath, says that development of the company’s moulded freeform optics technology required making advances in several key areas, such as mould fabrication, compression moulding of non-rotationally symmetric optics, and metrology to test the new lenses using computer-generated holograms.

Traffic Police to Use Hologram Vehicle Stickers as Tax Proof

The Indonesian Traffic Police will require vehicles to carry hologram stickers as proof that the owners have paid their vehicle taxes. The program is part of the traffic police’s road tax digitisation programme.

The sticker program was initiated in collaboration with the Home Affairs Ministry. In addition to supporting the tax compliance movement, the program is also expected to encourage the digital transformation of motor vehicle tax payments.

The Indonesian Traffic Police chief, Inspector General Istiono, said that the hologram stickers would help field officers in identifying if a vehicle’s taxes have been paid or not.

The stickers will have QR Codes and RFID instruments, to help police officers give tickets digitally. The stickers will also make it easier for the police to detect duplicate plate numbers. Each year, the road tax sticker colour will change.

Vehicle owners will obtain the stickers after paying their taxes online or offline. When paying offline, they will immediately be given the stickers by Department of Motor Vehicle officers. If they pay the taxes online, they can print the road tax stickers by scanning the verification code with the QR Scanner at public printing houses.

The Holography Conference 2021 – Trend for Government Attendance Continues

The Holography Conference Online (THCO) in 2020 saw an increase in participation from government officials involved in specifying security features for banknotes, ID cards, driving licences and other documents of value. The trend continued at this year’s event, which took place 17-18 November, with half of all 120 participants coming from central banks and government agencies.

The Holography Conference has traditionally been a forum for hologram suppliers, producers and users to meet and exchange information and experiences. It has also been a place to share and showcase the latest technologies, production techniques and to discuss applications and markets. This year the event was sponsored by The Authentication Solution Providers’ Association (ASPA) and partnered with Holography News®, The International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA) and the 17th Security Document Summit (SDS).

While the conference program reflected the wide range of applications that benefit from holographic technologies, the statistic that 50% of all attendees came from government is testament to the role that holograms and other diffractive optically variable image devices (DOVIDs) have established as the primary first level anticounterfeit devices.

The conference was divided into four thematic sessions to reflect the diversity of applications for holograms in document security, brand protection and packaging enhancement.

High security features in action Frank van der Horst, researcher and senior policy advisor at the Cash Policy Department of De Nederlandsche Bank, started proceedings in the High Security Features in Action session of the conference with his presentation on ‘It All Starts with Attention’.

The good news for readers of Holography News® is that in Frank’s recent poll of the Dutch public, the hologram was the second-best known feature on euro banknotes (39%), second only to the watermark (75%). In a similar survey in 2017 of features that provide the impression of ‘difficult to counterfeit’, hologram foil features were rated with the highest confidence score. Frank’s ongoing research in the area of security features recognition and trust has some key policy implications for banknote design, most notably that salient elements should be near the security feature, not elsewhere on the note.

Since 2011, Ian Smith from KURZ, has dealt with sales of KINEGRAM foil for banknotes in various regions around the world. His presentation on ‘OVD Foil in Banknote Windows: the Current State of the Art’ was a whistle stop tour through banknotes from across the globe that are protected with the KINEGRAM origination technique encapsulated in a window feature.

Ian started with a description of the Euro Series II, in which the banknotes are made of cotton-based substrate (paper) and in which all bar the two lowest denominations have a window with foil over the top.

In a world first for a conference, Ian presented an animation of the window cutting and laminate stripe application in a one-pass rotary process. The window is cut into the paper with either a die or laser cut, the foil is then applied as a laminate over the window in registration to the height of the banknote. On the reverse of the paper there is a counter-foil applied to equalise the absorption of moisture into the paper. The images viewable on the front and reverse of the EURO (Ian used the ‘20’ as his example) are distinctive KINEGRAM REVIEW® images, in that the single number ‘20’ on the front is different to the repeated wallpaper pattern of ‘20s’ on the reverse with both cases being right reading.

In testimonies from police authorities across Europe made after counterfeit currency raids there is a recurring sentiment that the stripe over window effect on the euro remains the most difficult feature for fraudsters to even simulate, never mind counterfeit.

Ian continued the theme of KINEGRAM variations that include the KINEGRAM HDM High-Definition Metallisation stripe over window on the Polish zloty, the KINEGRAM Applied Path Label (APL) on a house note from Orell Füssli and KINEGRAM COLORS® APL with KINEGRAM ZERO.ZERO on a note produced by the Hungarian Banknote Printing Company.

All of the above are paper banknotes, but the majority of banknotes with window features are produced on polymer, a technology which led the way in the incorporation of apertures both as intrinsic features and carriers of different optical effects.

Ian went on to catalogue what he believed to be all of the polymer banknotes in circulation that have a foil feature in the window. The job of making a window in a polymer, rather than a paper. note is made easier by the fact that the substrate starts off transparent so that the window is actually a hold-back mask of the opacity ink applied to the remainder of the note.

The presentation also delved into the types of metallisation that KURZ uses to achieve a range of minimum line widths and placement tolerances with the KINEGRAM ZERO.ZERO® rated with +/- 0.0mm tolerance between the metal and the diffractive feature.

Ian concluded his wide-reaching review by illustrating the theme of his presentation that, despite the depth of engineering and technical knowhow that go into making OVD foil on banknote windows, the objective of the end result is to provide unambiguous and easy to recognise features for the public to read. The presentation ended with a Spanish language public awareness video from the Central Bank of Costa Rica, which has recently converted its whole series to polymer – the message for which focuses around the mantra of Toque, Mire, Gire (ie. Feel, Look, Tilt).

In the third paper of the session, Nuno Gonçalves from the Imprensa Nacional Casa da Moeda (INCM), the Portuguese state printer and mint, explored the challenges in the creation of a mobile validation system of holograms using computer vision. Nuno’s presentation noted that new possibilities for brand protection and anti-counterfeiting are being opened up by hologram validation using computer vision on smartphones.

One of the first results of this work is a strategic alliance that he announced between INCM and UK brand protection specialist OpSec to support governments in implementing high security tax stamp solutions.

Concluding the session’s presentations, Alan Newman – Currency Product Director at De La Rue – argued that, of all the security features for banknotes, holograms are the most misunderstood. Alan’s paper explained how today’s high security banknote-grade holograms are a world apart from the holograms that appeared on banknotes in the 1980s. He set out how holograms differ from other anti-counterfeiting technologies and how polymer banknotes in particular have played a key role in unlocking new holographic effects.

Physical to Digital

The second session of the conference, titled ‘From Physical to Digital –Authentication on the Move’ looked at some strong emerging technology factors, like smart serialisation and ubiquitous communications, which are changing the way that holograms are integrated into brand protection and supply chain management.

Manoj Kochar has a background in both holography and authentication – he is a past president of the ASPA, India and the current ASPA representative on the IHMA board. ASPA’s report on ‘The State of Counterfeiting in India, 2021’ formed the starting point for Manoj’s paper on the ‘Evolution of Phygital Hologram in India –Current Overview’.

The term ‘phygital’ is becoming an accepted shorthand for features based on or combining physical and digital technology, and Manoj presented several use cases where multiple formats of physical and digital security measures combine to bring heightened protection and convenience to the consumer.

Manoj also highlighted the role that is being played by policy makers in government to galvanise the transition from physical to digital security, most notably with India’s National ID card – the Aadhaar card - which is a physical record of what is essentially an electronic assertion of identity. The physical card comes in credit card format, has a host of printed security features, a hotstamped hologram and QR code.

Following Manoj, Peter Scheir founder of AD 2000 Inc and AuthentiBrand Inc, explained how he quickly recognised the need for anti-counterfeiting protection for the burgeoning cannabis market in the US after he moved to San Diego in 2017.

Peter’s paper, ‘Cannabis – Thwarting Counterfeit in the Wild West of Markets’ set out why the regulatory and legal

framework for production and sales of cannabis are similar to the sale of alcohol at the end of prohibition, although cannabis is still federally illegal. Peter stressed the importance that all legitimate brands need to show their customers suppliers and retailers that the packages are real and contain authentic products.

The third presentation in the session came from Neal Skura, Director of Canadian company Nanotech. Neal’s starting premise was that, to be effective, overt optical security must be both easy to authenticate and difficult to simulate. He presented a toolkit of innovative nano-optic based visual effects to combat counterfeiting activity. His discussion also examined industry trends as well as recent examples of Nanotech LiveOptik™ successfully protecting the world’s largest sporting events.

When asked about what effect the recent acquisition of Nanotech by nanocomposites company Meta Materials might have, Neal was relaxed in saying that he expects a continuing emphasis on innovation that will bring new products to market.

The final presentation of Day 1 of the conference was an update from Linda Law on the progress of the Virtual Museum of Holography in the US. Linda, who is founder of the virtual museum, has a long history of working in the field of holography as an artist, teacher, curator and digital content creator. Through her work at the virtual museum, she is establishing a new way of presenting holograms to the world using Light Field Technology.

Novel Materials, Techniques and Applications

The second day of the conference started with a session on ‘Novel Materials, Techniques and Applications’. Despite being a largely optical recording technology, holography has always depended on high resolution recording materials and good quality mass production and converting to ensure fidelity in the finished product.

Window cutting and laminate stripe application in a one-pass rotary process (© KURZ).

Polymer notes in circulation (© KURZ).

In Jochen Kirsch’s presentation ‘Quality Hanging by a Thread. Mastering the Challenge of Thread Slitting Inspection’, ISRA VISION’s Sales Director of the Security business unit emphasised that thread inspection in the slitter is the last and most important quality gate for security threads, with or without holographic or diffractive security features. Unfortunately, Jochen went on, existing automated optical inspection solutions for thread slitters have left a lot to be desired. The paper discussed their shortcomings and proposed a new approach.

The theme of novel materials and applications was further developed by Dominique Collé from Heidelberg Instruments Mikrotechnik (Germany) in his paper ‘Maskless Lithography Technologies Applied to Holographic Effects’, which described how a digital light modulator can be used to directly and quickly write a binary or relief pattern onto a resist coated substrate, resulting in a structured surface that diffracts light in a predetermined manner to create colourful optical effects. Libor Šustr from Optaglio (Czech Republic) continued the theme in his presentation ‘Ultimate Holographic Data Protection’, in which he highlighted the company’s technologies to protect the data on polycarbonate documents such as ID cards or the data pages of passports.

In his paper ‘New Opportunities for Holographic Coins’, Dr Hans Bjelkhagen, author of ‘Holography and Philately –Postage Stamps with Holograms’ turned his attention not to postage stamps but to coins. In his chronological exploration of the minting of metals with surface relief holograms to produce some really striking visual effects, Hans catalogued many of the holographic coins that have been produced – mostly for collectors or very limited

Representing the field of academic research, Daniel Blackmore and Oliver Peacock, both PhD students from De Montfort University (DMU Leicester, UK) led us through their research into holographic colour, depth and movement.

Daniel’s work on true colour analogue holography complemented Oliver’s work on the different ways that artists and scientists create depth in holograms. They both have some time to develop their work at DMU and seemed encouraged by the advice and support that came from the conference audience during the Q&A session.

The conference was thankful to Dr WeiWei Zhang’s for staying up late (by now it was 10pm Beijing time, from where WeiWei was joining) to deliver his paper on ‘Dynamic and Full-Colour Projective Imaging Technology’.

Dr Zhang’s work at the Zhongchao Special Security Technology Company (ZSST) focuses on optical security effects and his paper introduced two novel projection imaging techniques: ColorPro™ technology is based on the reflection and focus of optical microstructures while ColorNova® is viewed in transmission with, for example, the torch from a mobile phone acting as the light source.

It seemed fitting that the concluding presentation of the session and the conference was on ‘Latest Developments in the Hologram Image Register (HIR)’.

Dr Paul Dunn, currently Director of Technology Innovation at OpSec Security and Chair of the IHMA, briefed the audience, many of whom are members of the association, on the unique nature of the HIR and how it is rightly perceived as the ‘jewel in the crown’ of the IHMA services. It is now an integral part of compliance with the ISO 14298 standard.

Paul highlighted that, as the industry evolves, the HIR needed to keep pace with the needs of the membership and that he would announce further updates to the register in the coming weeks.

Holography News® will be covering a selection of the individual presentations in more detail in future issues.

Following the formal sessions of the conference, the mood switched to celebration as the winners of the IHMA Awards for Excellence in Holography 2021 were announced. Details of the winners in the five categories, as well as the ‘People’s Choice’, can be found on page 1.

Portals Completes Acquisition of Fedrigoni Security

Fedrigoni, one of the leading European producers of specialty papers and self-adhesive labels, and Portals, one of the world leaders in banknote and security paper production, have completed the sale of Fedrigoni’s Security business based in Bollate, including its employees and assets, as originally announced on 28 April.

In a separate agreement, Portals has also acquired an option to purchase certain assets and production machinery related to banknote and passport papers from the Fabriano (Italy) security division of Fedrigoni. This option may be exercised by either party by the end of 2021. Fedrigoni’s security business includes an extensive portfolio of security features for banknote applications and other security documents, including magnetic, holographic and colour shift threads, along with colour shift and diffractive foils, as well as the production plant in Bollate (Milan, Italy).

All Bollate’s activities have been successfully moved to Fase S.r.l., the new company established to enable the sale of the Security business to Portals. Around 100 employees from the Group – including operations, sales and administration – have joined Fase S.r.l. and all contracts related to the security business have been transferred to the new company, ensuring full continuity for customers and suppliers.

As for Fabriano, in case the option is exercised, the machinery and equipment used for the production of banknote and passport papers will be sold to Portals, but with all employees and certain critical assets, such as the mould machine, remaining with Fedrigoni to strengthen the Art & Drawing paper business, which includes art papers and quality printing papers, both of which are expanding quickly and will be developed further.

Coin (© The Royal Canadian Mint. Photo © Hans Bjelkhagen).

The final session of the conference took a forward look into the continuing development of the technology and was witness to the incredible diversity within the holographic community.

After the decision to run The Holography Conference in an online format in 2020 for reasons of COVID travel restrictions, the decision to keep the online format for THCO 2021 was made for functional and aesthetic ones. The hard work of the technical staff behind the scenes provided an excellent format with engaging graphics and layouts to showcase the continuing developments in holography.

Since its acquisition by private equity firm Epiris in 2018, Portals has invested heavily to develop its banknote and security paper business. Following the Bollate acquisition, Portals will be able to provide its customers with an improved and integrated portfolio of papers, security threads and foils, therefore significantly accelerating its investment in a comprehensive innovation strategy.

HOLOEXPO 2021

This year’s XVIII International Conference HOLOEXPO 2021 on Holography and Applied Optical Technologies was held on 20–23 September at the Primorye Hotel, Gelendzhik, Russia. The conference was dedicated to the life and achievements of Sergei Borisovich Odinokov — the conference’s founder and chairman for many years who passed away early in September.

The opening ceremony gave an opportunity for Vladimir Yuryevich Venediktov, Interim Chairman of the Program Committee, and other members of the applied optics scientific community from across Russia, and beyond, to welcome participants. It also gave Elena Nikolaevna, General Manager of HoloGrate, a chance to present a gallery of photographs from HOLOEXPO 2004-2020 in a retrospective tribute to Sergei Borisovich Odinokov.

The conference organisers, Optical Holographic Devices from Moscow, did a great job in arranging the 38 plenary and sectional reports into thematic sections: 16 plenary talks on the most important topics in the field of holography,

4 reports on technologies in the field of security holograms.

4 reports on imaging and augmented reality holographic optics.

5 reports on methods of computer synthesis, metamaterials and nanotechnology.

5 reports on volume holography and photosensitive materials.

4 reports on holographic interferometry and optical-holographic information processing.

And a total of 13 posters were presented. There were also demonstrations of optomechanics, optoelectronic components and laser equipment from Azimut Photonics and of art holograms from VP Kuznetsov based in Novosibirsk, Russia.

A roundup of the reports, talks, posters and demonstrations at the conference can be summarised as:

In the field of security holography, methods for the photopolymer materials are being actively investigated for optical personalisation using computer-generated holograms under conditions of circulation recording, and for the implementation of full-colour and colour volume images.

In the field of diffractive and holographic optical elements, the main task is to increase their diffraction efficiency as they move into mass production. The study of volume diffraction gratings for a wide class of problems remains relevant, particularly for implementation into tuneable laser systems and into optical waveguides for use in augmented reality devices.

Methods of digital holography are being implemented for the development of optical information coding, holographic formation of 3D images, creation of optical traps and other photonic devices. For the optical industry there is an acute problem of quality control of spherical optical surfaces. It is necessary to include interferometers to solve this problem in the state register of measuring instruments. A technological breakthrough is required in the implementation of contactless testing of spherical optical surfaces.

The general sponsor of the conference was KRYPTEN, Dubna with additional sponsorships from, amongst others: HoloGrate Atlas, State Institute of Applied Optics and James River Branch LLC.

1B The Beacon, Beaufront Park, Anick Road, Hexham, Northumberland, NE46 4TU, UK Tel: +44 (0)1932 785 680 www.holography-news.com

First Legal Tender Banknote with a KURZ THREAD

Efficient Dual Page Reproduction in Holographic Data Storage

An article recently released in Optics Express proposes a simultaneous dual-page reproduction for holographic data storage (HDS) by reusing a transmitted reference beam that passes through a recording medium after data reconstruction.

Holographic data storage (HDS) is a promising next-generation optical storage technology with a large capacity and a high data transfer rate. In particular, one of the features of HDS is its ability to store data for more than 50 years on low-cost recording media.

For more than 30 years, the secure document industry, and banknotes in particular, have become familiar with holographic and other diffractive image security features transferred onto the document via KURZ’s surface applied foils. That same know-how is now being used to produce KURZ THREADS, which carry highly colourful and dynamic imagery provided by the KINEGRAM® technology.

At the beginning of November, Poland’s central bank, Narodowy Bank Polski (NBP), issued a new commemorative banknote celebrating Prof Lech Kaczyński, the former President of the Republic of Poland. The currency issued by the NBP – including collector banknotes and coins – is legal tender in Poland. The new commemorative banknote, limited to 80,000 pieces, is secured with a KURZ THREAD, a windowed-security thread with proprietary KINEGRAM COLORS® structures in a paper substrate.

KINEGRAM stripes and patches from KURZ are already in circulation on billions of banknotes around the globe and KINEGRAM COLORS is a central visual feature of the new English pound sterling banknotes.

Whilst the PERURI House Note 3.0 use of KINEGRAM with KURZ THREADS predates it, the new ‘Lech Kaczyński – It is Worth Being a Pole’ banknote is KURZ THREADS’ first reference in circulation as legal tender. The diffractive security thread on the note is vertically divided into two colours. The inscriptions ‘NBP’ and ‘20 zł’ within the security thread are demetallised and interact, like the colours, with the overall banknote design.

Thanks to the relatively wide windows in the paper substrate (4.5 mm – the typical thread widths range from 3-6 mm), the KINEGRAM® FLUX effect can display crosswise left and right movement effects.

As the amount of data that needs to be stored increases year by year, the development of recording media such as magnetic recording media and semiconductor memory with high speed and large capacity is increasing rapidly.

Equally, there is an increase in the amount of data that must be stored over long periods of time but is inactive, called ‘cold data’, expanding the need for storage that is not only high-speed and high capacity but also low-cost and can be stored for a long period of time. So far, HDS with a high recording density of 1 Tbit/in2, 2.2 Tbit/in2, and 2.4 Tbit/in2 have been reported.

Until recently, the work in HDS has used a binary modulation scheme for recording and reproduction, whereas recent studies have explored the introduction of multi-level modulation, which is expected to increase these values several times over.

20-zloty Front and Reverse (© NBP and KURZ).

Beyond the banknote reference in Poland, KURZ now offers a wide range of threads with a large palette of colour changes and movement effects, which allows the threads to be designed to complement the principal colours of each individual banknote or to match a surface-applied security feature for visual cross-reference. The fabrication techniques employed mean that the movement effects are recognisable at a distance, at multiple viewing angles and in almost any lighting condition. Visual validation of the banknote is achieved by a simple tilt of the viewer’s hand.

KURZ THREADS can also support KINEGRAM® COSMIC, which stands for ‘metallic colour shift’. This combination of thread and optical deterrent can accommodate many levels of security, including: 3D images microtext and nanotext magnetic, IR and UV taggant-based covert and machine-readable features.

The security level can be raised further with partial demetallisation in customised patterns. The threads are compatible with banknote varnish and can be overprinted with offset and intaglio.

A video of KURZ THREADS with KINEGRAM® COSMIC can be found at https://www.kurz-banknotes.com/index. php?id=112

Holographic Data Storage

The data format used in HDS is known as ‘data page’, which is a two-dimensional (2D) data array. In typical HDS, a data transfer rate is expressed as a multiple of the amount of the data in one data page reproduced by a beam exposure and the number of reproduced data pages per unit time. The amount of data in a data page increases as the pixel size decreases and the density of pixels of the SLM (spatial light modulator) and camera increases. By using one of the most characteristic properties of holograms, the ability to record phase information, modulation codes that combine phase and light intensity have been proposed in numerical simulations. The amount of information per data page can be increased by increasing the number of gradations through multilevel modulation. Although the HDS using complex amplitude modulation is promising, it will take more time to demonstrate it in experiments because the noise sensitivity is severe.

(Continued)

So, in the paper titled ‘Highly efficient dual page reproduction in holographic data storage’1, the researchers at the Science & Technology Research Laboratories, Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), propose a simultaneous dual-page reproduction for holographic data storage (HDS) with highefficiency and high-speed data reproduction by reusing a transmitted reference beam that passes through a recording medium after data reconstruction. Two data pages can be reproduced simultaneously by changing the polarisation state of the beam and re-illuminating the recording medium. The transmitted reference beam enters the recording medium at a different incident angle to reproduce different data pages; thus, this technology can double datatransfer rates without increasing the laser’s output power or preparing another laser source. In the experiment, neighbouring angle-multiplexed two data pages were simultaneously reconstructed and a data transfer rate of 1.0 Gbps was obtained.

1 https://www.osapublishing.org/oe/fulltext.cfm?uri=oe-29-21-33257&id=460003

Close up of thread (© NBP and KURZ)

A Year in Headlines – 2021

By Francis Tuffy – Editor

If, like me, you remember the start of 2021 as a time of reserved optimism in thinking that the year ahead couldn’t possibly be as bad as the year just passed, well you and I were only partially correct. 2021 proved to be as unpredictable in terms of mutations and variations of COVID as 2020. But as the following year in headlines show, the holography industry has proven to be incredibly resilient in the face of economic and societal turbulence.

The headlines clearly demonstrate the banknote industry’s hunger for holographic security features remains undiminished. But equally obvious is the rebirth of brand protection and the role that holography, in combination with smartphones, is playing in connecting the physical and virtual worlds to help combat counterfeiting. Holography has always been a technology with a broad appeal and 2021 was no different. Chocolate, architecture, large telescope lenses, cannabis and submarine warfare are just a few of the improbable but intriguing applications where you will find diffractive optics at play.

January

IHMA Highlights Role of Holograms in the Battle Against ID Fraud. Dr Paul Dunn, Chairman of the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA), pointed out that in the fight against counterfeiting and fraud, holography, propelled by advances in materials and applications, was helping to secure data and thwart criminal interference, tampering, alteration, forgery and imitation – most notably of photographs and personal data. Holograms that Make Smartphones Smarter. In the same way that the invention of the laser in the early 1960s paved the way for recording and viewing holograms, so the new generation of smartphones, along with the advent of faster 5G networks, is making ‘heightened reality’ images a commercial reality.

February

Holograms Help Protect Proofof-Vaccination Card. Compliance management and infectious disease screening company CastleBranch became one of the first companies in the world to issue Real Vaccination ID Cards, which use holography as a key security feature. Demax Unveils E-LIDOGRAM PC Inlay. Bulgarian company Demax Holograms unveiled a new solution for the protection of polycarbonate documents including national ID cards, driving licences and passport datapages. Branded as E-LIDOGRAM® PC Inlay, it is designed to provide enhanced security of government-issued documents along with maximum DOVID design freedom.

March

Holograms Good Enough to Eat

We’ve seen holograms used to decorate fingernails, garments, buildings and makeup. But now research conducted at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi suggests that food might be the next area for the commercial use of holograms. NFCHOLO™ Technology to Protect ID Documents. Russian-based producer of holograms and other security elements, Krypten, developed NFCHOLO™ technology for ID document security. NFCHOLO can be used for plastic documents that require authentication and security of the owner’s data.

April

Apple’s Patent Interest in Holography

A US patent recently granted to tech giant Apple shows how cameras on the augmented reality wearable, Apple Glass, could record the real world around the wearer and then use that information to create holograms. The patent also focuses on ensuring that cameras and holograms would not disrupt the wearer’s view. Is Medical Holography a Market or a Group of Applications? It seems that each month, Holography News™ covers stories about interesting applications for holography in medical imaging. But is this just a set of unconnected research or is there a real market for heightened reality imaging in the fields of surgery, training and diagnosis?

May

The PicoMaster-H – a New Generation of Direct Write Systems. 4PICO Litho of the Netherlands announced the addition of the PicoMaster-H system to the PicoMaster range of high resolution, single-beam, direct write lithography (SB-DWL) hologram and Fresnel lens mastering systems. IHMA Refines Glossary of Holograms. The IHMA updated the Glossary of Holograms on the website (ihma.org) to reflect advances in the industry and the expanded use of holographic terms in heightened reality displays.

June

IHMA and a Brief History of Holography

After May’s addition of a Glossary of Holograms, the association added a History of Holography as a resource on the IHMA website. The history sets out a timeline of key events in the 70-year history of commercial holography. Guiding Light is Big Business. Snap Inc, the NYSE-listed software company behind photo messaging app Snapchat, acquired UK-based WaveOptics in a deal reportedly worth more than $500 million.

July

Latest Holographic Solutions from OpSec Security. OpSec Security launched OpSec® KeyCode, a so-called first-of-its-kind holographic two-factor authentication label that protects brands from counterfeiting and grey market sales. VividQ Raises $15 Million to Turn Normal Screens into Holographic Displays. VividQ, a UK-based start-up, with technology for rendering holograms on flat screens, has raised $15 million to develop its technology for next-generation digital displays and devices.

August

Krypten Releases House Notes with 3D-GRAM® CONTRUST. Russian secure hologram company, Krypten, introduced the 100/50 Nobelists house note with a brand-new 3D-GRAM® CONTRUST photopolymer security patch for use on paper and plastic banknotes. To mark the 800th birthday of Nizhny Novgorod, Krypten also produced a commemorative hologram with volume colour images.

KURZ Group Acquires tesa scribos. A recent announcement from the KURZ Group saw the company joining forces with the scribos brand protection division of the adhesive tape giant, tesa, to work against the growing threat of product and brand piracy.

September

Intriguing Portrait Sighting on New 10,000 Yen Bill. Printing of the newly designed 10,000 yen note, which is scheduled to be issued in the first half of 2024, has begun. The note contains several anti-counterfeiting devices, not least of which is an intriguing moving portrait of Eiichi Shibusawa displaying the tell-tale motion parallax and stereopsis associated with holographic stereograms. Holograms and Architecture. Holography’s ability to disperse and form light into colours and images that create a heightened visual experience has, for many years, been used in architectural settings to create visually stimulating installations. In this article, HN reviewed some of the world’s major holographic architectural installations and explored some of the holographic previsualisation technologies that are helping to design the architectural structures of the future.

An Interview with Prof David Brotherton-Ratcliffe – LaserCraft, Geola and Much More

By Francis Tuffy – Consultant Editor

Prof David Brotherton-Ratcliffe’s work in applied optics has to a large extent mirrored the fortunes of holography. Having founded and managed LaserCraft in London in 1982, whilst completing a PhD in Plasma Physics and Controlled Nuclear Fusion, he moved to Australia in 1985. After working for 4-5 years as a research fellow in Fusion Physics at Flinders University in Adelaide he founded Australian Holographics Pty in 1989, making large format holograms for commercial advertising serving the Australasian market.

In 1991, after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, he founded General Optics Pty which imported specialist optics and lasers from the ex-Soviet Union into Australia, and a year later he started a similar company, LMC France Instruments in Paris, serving the EU market.

David has also had a distinguished academic career, with recent connections to De Montfort and Wrexham Glyndŵr universities.

But it is perhaps his work at Geola Group, which he founded in 1992, for which David will be most familiar to readers of Holography News®. Geola’s commercial activity is centred around the facilities in Vilnius, Lithuania where the focus is on commercial holography, lasers and photomaterials.

fall of the Berlin wall and to the opening up of the former Soviet Union to western markets. Most importantly, Vilnius had, for a long time, been an area well known for its key infrastructure in the fields of optics and lasers.

Initially Geola played the role of a research facility for my company, Australian Holographics, as well as exporting scientific equipment to the UK, EU and Australian markets. But by the end of the 90s, the business had started manufacturing its own neodymium pulsed lasers for the science and holography markets.

By the late 90s Geola had signed a global distribution agreement with the Russian holographic film manufacturer Slavich, and had also released a series of standalone holographic studio systems. These systems, for which there was a small but not insignificant market, allowed people with minimal training to produce large pulsed holograms of both people and animals.

Q. While most of the commercial activity is based in Vilnius, the facility where we are meeting is dedicated to research and advances in ultra-realistic imaging. Can you give me a brief overview of your current research interests?

A. Currently my main research interests are in two completely separate areas. The first is electrical propulsion physics and the second is optical holography. I divide my time between Geola in Lithuania where I am Chief Scientific Officer, our UK Aerolab which has links to Wrexham Glyndŵr University and our UK OptoLab which has links to De Montfort University.

I met up with David and his team at Geola’s research labs in the UK to find out more about his current research interests.

Q. Thank you for inviting me to this fantastic facility and for reaching out to the Holography News® readership. I know that much of Geola’s business is based out of Vilnius, so perhaps you can start by running through the origins of the organisation and how it grew to the size it is today?

A. Our principal facility is indeed situated in Lithuania’s capital city, Vilnius. The origins of Geola go back to just after the

Perhaps the key moment for Geola occurred in 1999, when we patented and produced the world’s first pulsed digital direct-write (DWDH) colour holographic printer. On the back of this, the company was able to secure very substantial investment and to spin out a Canadian operation called XYZ Inc. This led to the Geola group growing quickly; my UK company, Geola Technologies Ltd, was subsequently formed to help with the high demand for Geola’s RGB lasers by XYZ. Today, while Geola’s primary market centres on the design and manufacture of scientific lasers for the international science community, we continue to be committed to holography. We have recently developed a range of lasers, originators and digital printers aimed specifically at the holographic security industry. Geola’s Blue Phoenix originators, which are available with pulsed or CW lasers, are capable of all the usual effects expected from competitive Image-Matrix machines at very competitive prices – they produce high quality holograms of excellent brightness.

In addition, drawing on our unique DWDH technology, we are able to provide effects not usually available - such as full-parallax ultra-realistic deep achromatic surface relief holograms with hogel sizes of 100 microns.

The OptoLab has basically grown out of the old Centre for Ultra-Realistic Imaging at Wrexham Glyndŵr University, which itself grew out of the Centre of Modern Optics at Glyndŵr and the Welsh company View Holographics Ltd. The main focus of this facility is the study of ultra-realistic full-colour digital holography. In this regard we have rebuilt the holographic printer that my colleagues and I designed for View Holographics. This tri-colour digital printer is based on a Geola Nd:YAG RGB pulsed laser and is capable of writing glass holograms up to well over a square metre.

I guess the general plan can be divided into ‘Art’ and ‘Science’. On the science side, we would like to refine the technique of directwrite digital holography (DWDH), study variants such as wavefront printing and to develop the associated technologies of light-field computation, light-field acquisition and general light-field displays (both holographic and other, static and real-time).

On the art side, we would like to understand how this science can be used most effectively in conjunction with modern origination tools such as virtual and augmented reality - and ultimately how digital holography might best be accepted as a serious art medium with proper archival properties.

One of the main aims of our research programme is the creation of DWDH holograms which simply transcend the medium – in the sense that an observer’s attention is no longer dominated by the fact that they are looking at a hologram per se, but is instead captured almost entirely by the image produced by the hologram.

Prof Brotherton-Ratcliffe in his research lab.

Q. I notice that, in addition to the usual lasers, tables and optical equipment you would expect to see in an ‘analogue’ holographic lab, there are banks of servers that are more familiar to ‘digital’ holography. Can you say some more about that?

A. The banks of servers you describe are indeed used in our digital holography research.

Our DWDH printer is designed essentially as a research instrument, in that virtually all optics are configurable in real-time. This gives rise to quite a few racks of microcontrollers which are responsible for the control of all the motors. For a simple commercial DWDH printer this is over-kill in the extreme; for us it is useful in that we can use software to control absolutely everything to virtually any precision required. And this allows us to use the printer in different modes and to switch between these easily.

Other racks contain computers, mostly running Linux, which my colleague and a part-time PhD student at De Montfort, Tal Stokes, has built to process large lightfields. We also use them for our other area of research – computational fluid dynamics and aircraft propulsion simulations.

Over the past few years Tal has worked with our resident artist, Dr Ioana Pioaru, to manipulate the light-field datasets from Ioana’s digital sculptural drawings. Ioana produces these drawings using Google’s virtual reality Tilt-Brush application. However, before being able to be holographically printed, the drawings need processing in a program such as Blender and then the data must be digitally postprocessed and ‘image-planed’.

The final datasets are written onto either photoresist or silver halide as holograms. Currently, our Vilnius facility does this, but we hope to start doing this also in the UK shortly. Typically, Ioana’s holograms contain up to 0.5TB of data, and special algorithms and custom computer architectures, which Tal and I have worked on, are key to keeping the computational time down. In future we anticipate the dataset size to grow – perhaps even up to the 100TB range. Part of Tal’s PhD work is coping with these large datasets.

Q. There is also a beautiful exhibition space for viewing some truly remarkable 3D images. How does this tie into Geola’s research?

A. This space, which is on the second floor above the OptoLab, belongs to Dr Ioana Pioaru and is her art studio. As mentioned earlier, Ioana works at Geola as our resident artist and has been responsible for inventing the new technique of holographic sculptural drawing.

When you visited us, you saw two types of holograms which Ioana had made: RGB full-parallax digital reflection holograms made on silver halide film and transparent surface relief holograms made on glass. All were printed in Vilnius using Geola’s pulsed DWDH holographic printing systems. Ioana generated the data for these holograms using Google’s Tilt-Brush program running on an HTC Vive Virtual Reality system. All the holograms were portraits of mostly famous people who Ioana ‘drew’ in 3D. I should point out that drawing in 3D means taking a digital ‘pencil’ and physically tracing 3D curves in space much as one would draw on a sheet of paper. The huge difference is, of course, the extra dimension and very few people have the technical ability to draw effectively in 3D.

As I also mentioned previously, a lot of data processing is required to manipulate the output of Tilt-Brush into a form compatible with Geola’s DWDH printers. This is where Ioana has collaborated closely with Tal Stokes. The first holograms Ioana made with this technique were standard 0.8mm hogel silver halide reflection holograms. She produced both full-colour and later achromatic versions. Importantly these were black or coloured lines over a white space. These ‘first generation’ holograms were exhibited at the 2017 Display Holography symposium in Portugal.

Ioana’s latest artworks are glass surface relief holograms made with 100 micron hogels. The much smaller size of these holograms allowed Ioana to perfect her sculptural drawing and to use white lines on a dark background, which routes the light energy into the drawing lines more effectively, enhancing the overall brightness of the hologram.

These ‘second-generation’ holograms have been exhibited in New York and Bucharest and will shortly form part of a solo exhibition scheduled for February 2022 at Gallery 286 in London.

Q. The effects of the pandemic have been hard on all businesses. How has Geola coped during this difficult time?

A. In Vilnius we certainly encountered problems. By December 2019 we had won quite a few government tenders for the manufacture of laser systems around the world – some of these were then postponed for over a year. With others, we couldn’t deliver or install our manufactured systems because we simply couldn’t send our technicians to the country in question. So, there was certainly an effect on our cashflow.

However, it wasn’t so big as to cause major problems. During the pandemic we were supported by two major EU grants for the development of laser and optical

equipment; we were therefore able to fall back on research work to some extent during the leanest periods.

In the UK, since we are in a fairly isolated area, and since our principal activity is research, we were not greatly affected. The building of the new OptoLab did take longer than expected though, as only several people could be on site at a time.

Q. Finally, this is your chance to wave a magic wand. What would be the one advance in the industry that you would like to see that would accelerate growth in the hologram industry?

A. That’s quite a difficult one to answer. Because the industry is diverse. At the moment, the largest market for holography is still in security, packaging and authentication. The other applications such as medical imaging, head-up display systems, real-time displays, HOEs, cultural heritage, 3D maps, interior decoration, clothing, jewellery and fine art – to name just the main ones – are relatively restricted. So different advances could certainly accelerate and promote different sectors of the industry.

I guess I’d go for a photopolymer that was sensitive to pulsed radiation. As you know, Geola has always concentrated on pulsed lasers rather than CW. The great advantage of the pulse laser is that you can write digital holograms and the digital HOEs you need for head-up displays much quicker than with CW lasers. Our current diodepumped holography lasers can easily reach >200Hz and the latest SLM technologies support this.

But photopolymers generally don’t like nanosecond pulses because, unlike silver halide, the chemistry involves a diffusion process – which is innately long. We do know however how to make our laser pulses rather longer (let’s say >300ns) – not too long so that vibration and rail movement is a problem – but long enough to get us into the regime where photopolymers could be engineered to be sensitive to this light.

If such a ‘fast’ photopolymer were to appear commercially, I think it could really make a difference to applications such as medical imaging and automotive headup displays.

Dr Ioana Pioaru’s studio.

Holograms: Eye-Catching, Distinctive and Secure

By Alan Newman, Product Director for the Currency Division, De La Rue

At the latest count a third of all banknotes contain a diffractive feature, in the form of a patch, stripe or thread, 327 to be precise. According to Frank van der Horst of the DNB in his presentation at last month's Holography Conference, the feature is the second best in public recognition terms after watermarks –which makes one wonder why the other two thirds of banknotes don’t use one!

Another speaker at the conference was Alan Newman of De La Rue, who reflected in his presentation on the importance of a layered approach throughout a banknote design, and the important role that holograms play in the banknote security features mix.

The scientific definition of a hologram is the recording of an interference pattern between two coherent beams of light, one of which has been reflected or transmitted from an object. This definition is a ‘classical’ hologram.

As time has progressed the general word ‘hologram’ has evolved to become an umbrella term for a wide range of diffractive devices. Today’s banknote holograms are highly secure and advanced but, in places, their reputation has been unfairly damaged by being wrongly associated with more decorative and commercial ‘holograms.’

We therefore start by summarising the five main benefits of the secure holograms that protect banknotes today.

1. They are fully customisable – virtually any graphical element or image can be incorporated into a hologram and made secure with an effect. A spider can crawl across a web and photorealistic models of a person can be captured in full threedimensions. Holograms can take on the form of a patch, stripe or thread to protect a banknote, and demetallisation techniques enable those product formats to adopt different shapes.

2. Holographic images lose their characteristic iridescent colour upon copying. This loss of colour is unique to holograms. Many security features lose their effect upon copying but retain their colour. Holograms lose both.

3. The detailed individual images and effects used in banknote holograms are virtually impossible to simulate – because they are not used in decorative or commercial holograms. They have been designed so that they cannot be accurately reoriginated using common commercially available equipment, skills or knowledge.

4. A single holographic feature protects a banknote in many ways by combining multiple contrasting effects which all require different steps to simulate. At its best a secure hologram combines effects, requiring two different origination

approaches because this doubles the counterfeiting barrier.

5. In polymer banknotes and paper banknotes with windows the holograms protect both sides of the note when placed in the window. Most security features only protect one side of the note, so this makes a hologram a particularly effective polymer security feature.

Getting the best ‘hologram’ for your banknote

There are different origination methods used to create the many ‘holographic’ gratings. The types of grating and the way those gratings are generated will guide the type of holographic effect that can be generated and the quality of that effect.

The chart above groups the various holographic origination methods by type of grating and grating generation approach. Origination methods in the same column will tend to be particularly good at specific effects, with similar strengths and weaknesses.

The commercially available machines used for re-origination simulation tend to be lower resolution ‘graphic arts’ methods (low resolution contact mask lithography) or lower resolution fixed pixel origination methods (dot matrix). These methods lend themselves to simpler switching and common graphical animation effects

Combinational technologies: digital and classical

De La Rue focusses on direct write lithography (an advanced type of digital holography) and a highly evolved form of Benton (H1-H2) holography, which for convenience we simply refer to as ‘classical’ holography. This enables holographic effects that require methods and knowledge that remain outside of the limits of standard decorative holograms. It also enables effects that are virtually impossible to reoriginate convincingly using the standard commercially available machines.

Classical holograms (eg. TrueImage™) are at the intersection of art and science, creating

detailed photorealistic images, threedimensional models, discrete animations and parallax effects that transition through every colour as the banknote is tilted.

Direct write holography, through precise control of the grating structure, lends itself to strong and engaging kinetic effects as well as complex image switches. Intuitive, rapid movement effects that are visible over a wide viewing angle (eg. PureImage™), and interactive icons that rotate above or below the plane of the hologram whilst become sharper under focussed light (eg. SpotLight™) are examples of some of the engaging effects that are now possible.

The design philosophy of De La Rue is to use combinations of contrasting secure effects in a single note, whilst ensuring the design is memorable and intuitive. Where possible holograms combine both classical and direct write origination methods to maximise the barriers to re-origination.

The hologram is part of the overall banknote design, amplifying themes and adopting shapes that allow it to be fully integrated into the note. Holograms provide a secure solution for central banks seeking to find ways to incorporate meaningful and engaging images into their banknote designs.

An example of a combinational hologram. The top section is originated using direct-write lithography, incorporating Spotlight™ (Thomas de la Rue logo, that appears to rotate about a vertical pivot above and below the plane of the hologram) and surrounded by PureImage™ (bringing the pattern work of Crystal Palace to life with dynamic movement). The middle section is a classical hologram, featuring an RGB portrait of Thomas de la Rue, microtext and the number 1 with depth and parallax effects. The bottom section also uses directwrite lithography and brings the Onoto pen to life with pseudo-relief combined with achromatic colour.

Classifications of holographic origination methods.

Avalon CreatesHolographics Sonar Display for Hunting Submarines

Kongsberg Geospatial has partnered with Avalon Holographics to develop a holographic sonar display for submarine warfare, in a project funded by the Canadian Department of National Defence IDEaS (Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security) program.

The system has been developed to reduce the cognitive load on passive sonar analysts by visualising complex undersea environments on a revolutionary new holographic display.

What are sometimes thought of as 3-D displays are actually two-dimensional projections of three-dimensional scenes on a flat monitor. The geometry in the scene is necessarily distorted to create the illusion of looking at a threedimensional object. To understand what they are looking at, an operator has to manipulate the view to look around the environment.

This is also limiting for situations in which multiple people are looking at the same display. A holographic display would provide a better solution for sharing 3-D information because the view of the data can be individualised, while the image itself remains static.

Avalon Holographics has created just that: a display that uses a complex array of millions of holographic elements, or ‘hogels’, to create a true, threedimensional image that can be clearly seen from different angles without requiring the use of headsets or goggles (see HN September 2020). This new display will combine passive sonar data with three-dimensional bathymetric (water depth) data to create an accurate sensor picture that can be used to locate and identify possible undersea threats.

Passive sonars are used by naval ships to locate targets around the platform on which the primary sensor is located, when active sonar is not viable or tactically desirable.

The new holographic sonar display created by Kongsberg Geospatial and Avalon Holographics is designed to increase underwater situational awareness with respect to target detection, supporting faster and more confident decision making when using passive sonar systems. The system will consist of three components: a sonar sensor system, a sonar map rendering system and the holographic display.

The sonar sensor system is located on board a surface vessel which could include a towed array, hull mounted sonar, or sonobuoy receiver. Data from the system is fed to the sonar map rendering system containing the information required to create the operational images to populate the 3-D holographic display.

October

The new Costa Rica ₡10,000 Banknote with KINEGRAM REVIEW®. The Banco Central de Costa Rica (BCCR) issued its new 10,000 cólones banknote this month. One of the defining features of the new note is the KINEGRAM REVIEW® registered stripe from KURZ, applied over a transparent seethrough window in the polymer substrate. Holographic Nanostructure Research is a Phenomenal Success. PHENOmenon received funding of €4 million, financed entirely from European funds, with the aim of developing a new technology that would allow the use of new materials, laser technology, simulation and design tools to develop customised surface structures to fabricate high quality optics with enhanced properties, such as extreme light focusing and anti-fog properties.

November

Kongsberg Geospatial is contributing the sonar map rendering system while Avalon Holographics will be contributing the holographic display used to visualise the processed data.

‘We’re excited to be delivering a new and unique user experience on a ground-breaking new display technology for situational awareness,’ said Ranald McGillis, President, Kongsberg Geospatial.

‘Our ground-breaking holographic display technology applies to a wide range of applications, but the battlespace has always been a primary user focus,’ added Russ Baker, cofounder, Avalon Holographics. ‘Together, Kongsberg’s TerraLens and Avalon’s Raydiance Engine are pioneering a new class of holographic situational awareness applications to transform 3-D battlespace visualisation, GIS and underwater warfare. These bold steps are just one way we’re transforming the science-fiction of holographic visual experiences into science fact.’

The initial phase of the IDEaS project will run for two months, during which time Avalon Holographics will be refining the performance of the display device, improving the software tools, and working with Kongsberg on software integration.

The goal is to proceed to the next phase of the project, which would involve enhancement of Kongsberg’s software, a more comprehensive integration with the display and porting to Avalon’s nextgeneration display technology.

IHMA Awards for Excellence in Holography Continue to Shine in Difficult Times. The winners of the IHMA Awards for Excellence in Holography were announced, amid a shower of virtual confetti, at the closing of The Holography Conference Online (THCO) on 18 November, with a total of six awards up for grabs. Need for Massive Space Telescope Inspires Lightweight Flexible Holographic Lens Inspired by a concept for discovering exoplanets with a massive space telescope, a team of researchers is developing holographic lenses that render visible and infrared starlight into either a focused image or a spectrum.

December

First Legal Tender Banknote with a KURZ THREAD. The new Poland ‘Lech Kaczyński – It is Worth Being a Pole’ banknote becomes KURZ THREADS first reference in circulation as legal tender. Avalon Holographics Creates Sonar Display for Hunting Submarines. Kongsberg Geospatial has partnered with Avalon Holographics to develop a holographic sonar display for submarine warfare. A year in headlines for the holography industry wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the passing of some of the titans of the industry during 2020. It is to be expected, but still painful, that as the technology has become fully mature, its pioneers will be advancing in years. Please join in tribute to U K Gupta, Steve McGrew, Fred Unterseher, Larry Lieberman and Sergey Borisovich Odinokov, whose lives were celebrated in the column inches of HN this year and to the families, colleagues and friends of those that weren’t memorialised in the publication but who contributed to the hologram industry and community.

Holographic sonar display (© Avalon Holographics and Kongsberg Geospatial).

Optical & Digital Document Security Conference – Rescheduled

Registration is now open for the rescheduled Optical & Digital Document Security (ODDS) conference and seminar, which has been postponed and will now be held in Vienna, Austria, 11-13 April, with the programme available to view online at opticaldigitalsecurity.com

The conference combines the highly successful and respected Optical Document Security conference with the Digital Document Security conference, because it is no longer appropriate to separate these domains. This recognises the current reality in the digitisation of what have traditionally been paper or polymer documents, while encouraging the high levels of security in the digital domain as have been achieved in the physical domain.

The two-day conference (12-13 April) opens with a session on the transition from physical to digital and virtual, followed by a short session on new approaches to physical document security, before separate afternoon tracks for identity and currency and payments.

The identity track opens with a presentation from the Secure Identity Alliance summarising its report on passport fraud trends and ways to combat them. There are then presentations about the Austrian approach to combining centralised and decentralised digital ID solutions; IDEMIA explaining how to use the secondary ID photo as a security feature; INCM describing a new digital authentication feature for portraits; Eurecom and Surys discussing their approach to fighting deep identity theft and Thales’ approach to protecting the micro-controller and OVD Kinegram, presenting its new personalised optical security feature.

Presentations across the whole two days are also relevant to identity protection, not only those in the dedicated identity track, especially the special keynote presentation by David Birch, a wellknown and sometimes provocative commentator on digital identity and digital currencies. His keynote is titled ‘Digital, Not Digitised: Security and Privacy, Identity and Credentials’.

David’s presentation leads into a session on a new but hot topic in 2021/22: health status proofs. The conference closes with a panel discussion to look at the future evolution of optical and digital document security – a topic which epitomises the positioning, role and importance of the Optical & Digital Document Security conference.

There are two half-day specialist events on 11 April preceding the two-day conference. The first will be a seminar on international standards relevant to the security of identity and financial transactions, led by Dr Alan Hodgson. This seminar will include a detailed look at the just-published ISO/ IEC 18013-5 standard on mobile driving licences, with Loffie Jordaan of AAMVA, who was convenor of the joint Working Group 10 that drew up this standard. The afternoon is devoted to a masterclass on security for cryptocurrencies and digital identities.

Don’t miss out on catching up with colleagues, customers and friends by registering now at opticaldigitalsecurity. com

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Editor: Francis Tuffy (right) francis@recon-intl.com

Contributors: Alan Newman

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