All-fibre pulsed digital holography

An all-fibre optic system was used to record pulsed digital holograms of objects undergoing static and dynamic deformations. Light from a pulsed ruby laser was divided in two beams, each launched through different optical fibres, One fibre carried the object beam illumination and the other conveyed the reference beam towards the detector of a CCD camera. Laser light scattered from the object surface was collected with a lens-optical fibre endoscope arrangement and combined at the CCD detector with the reference beam. The holograms thus formed were digitally recorded for static and dynamic conditions. For data evaluation the Fourier transform method was used. Results show phase maps that may be evaluated for static and dynamic object deformation. With the use of a pulsed laser, the all-fibre system presented here may find a number of useful applications outside the laboratory in areas such as micromechanics, microelectronics and medical endoscopy, where access to objects of interest is otherwise difficult. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.