Method and system for three dimensional digital holographic aperture synthesis

1. A method comprising:

a) splitting a laser temporally-modulated waveform of bandwidth B and duration D from a laser source into a reference beam and a target beam;

b) directing the target beam onto a target;

c) collecting first data that indicates amplitude and phase of light relative to the reference beam received at each of a plurality of different times during a duration D at each optical detector of an array of one or more optical detectors in a plane perpendicular to the target beam;

d) repeating steps a, b and c for a plurality of sampling conditions;

e) synthesizing the first data for the plurality of sampling conditions to form one or more synthesized sets;

f) forming a digital model of the target for each synthesized set with a down-range resolution based on the bandwidth B; and

g) operating a display device based at least in part on at least a portion of the digital model of the target for at least one synthesized set.

2. A method as recited in claim 1 , further comprising determining an average range to the target based on a travel time of a laser pulse reflected from the target and providing a reference path length for the reference beam based on the average range to the target.

3. A method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the digital model is a point cloud and the display device is a system configured to render a surface from a point cloud.

4. A method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the display device is a system configured to identify an object based on the digital model.

5. A method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the display device is a system configured to operate on the target based on the digital model.

6. A method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the plurality of sampling conditions are a plurality of different angles from the target to the array of one or more optical detectors.

7. A method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the plurality of sampling conditions is a plurality of different times while the target is subjected to a change in environment.

8. The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the one or more synthesized sets includes at least two synthesized sets and the step of operating the display device further comprises operating the display device to present second data that indicates a difference between at least two different digital models formed from the at least two synthesized sets.

9. The method as recited in claim 8 , wherein the at least two synthesized sets represent shape of an object for at least two different sampling conditions.

10. A method as recited in claim 9 , wherein the plurality of sampling conditions are a plurality of different times while the target is subjected to a change in environment.

11. The method as recited in claim 10 wherein the change in environment is a change in thermal conditions and the difference between the at least two different digital models indicates thermal expansion in response to the change in thermal conditions.

12. The method as recited in claim 11 wherein the thermal expansion is in a range from about 1 micron to about 100 microns.

13. The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein synthesizing the first data further comprises, for each synthesized set, selecting a plurality of subsets of the first data, synthesizing each subset separately to produce a synthesized subset and incoherently combining the plurality of synthesized subsets.

14. The method as recited in claim 1 , forming the digital model of the target further comprises wherein performing a 3D Fourier transform of each synthesized set such as by performing a one dimensional Fourier Transform of each dimension separately and combining results from all dimensions.

15. The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein:

the array of one or more optical detectors is a subset of pixels in a digital camera to allow a frame rate for the subset of pixels to be greater than a frame rate for all the pixels in the digital camera; and

said step d of repeating steps a, b, and c for the plurality of sampling conditions further comprises repeating steps a, b, and c for a plurality of different subsets of the pixels in the digital camera.

16. A system comprising:

a laser temporally-modulated waveform source configured to produce a target beam and a reference beam each with a bandwidth B and duration D;

an array of one or more optical detectors in a plane perpendicular to the target beam;

a display device;

at least one processor; and

at least one memory including one or more sequences of instructions,

the at least one memory and the one or more sequences of instructions configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to perform at least the following,

collecting, for a plurality of sampling conditions, first data that indicates amplitude and phase of light relative to the reference beam received at each of a plurality of different times during the duration D at each optical detector of the array of one or more optical detectors;

synthesizing the first data for the plurality of sampling conditions to form one or more synthesized sets;

forming a digital model of the target for each synthesized set; and

operating the display device based at least in part on at least a portion of the digital model of the target for at least one synthesized set.