Michael Halle
MIT Media Lab
Holograms are the highest quality three-dimensional displays available today. Computer-generated holograms have existed since the early 1970's, but the large amount of image information which they store has made computing them difficult and slow. For the last decade, the Spatial Imaging Group at the MIT Media Lab has worked to develop high quality static holographic displays, holographic video systems, and methods to efficiently compute the image information that these displays require. Techniques developed at MIT to reduce distortions in holograms are early versions of today's emerging image-based rendering algorithms. Finally, computer generated holographic stereograms are physical examples of how pieces of many viewpoints can be combined to form arbitrary synthetic viewpoints. This talk will start with a simple, "first principles" explanation of how three-dimensional displays work. I will show examples of the latest work done at MIT in static and video holographic displays. I will then discuss computer graphics techniques for efficiently rendering view information for holographic display of synthetic scenes.
Michael Halle has been a researcher at the MIT Media Lab since 1985. In 1987 he joined the lab's Spatial Imaging Group to develop computer graphics algorithms for synthetic holography. He has investigated fundamental concepts, practical applications, and new technologies in three-dimensional imaging. In 1995, while completing his dissertation work at MIT, he joined the Surgical Planning Lab at Brigham and Women's Hospital as a graphics engineer, designing algorithms, tools, and systems for surgical planning. Michael received his SB degree in computer science from MIT in 1988, and his SMVS degree from MIT in 1991.