Abstract

Symbolic substitution has been proposed as one means of performing digital computations optically [1,2]. In such a system, information is distributed throughout an assemblage of spatial patterns and is then processed via the transformation of these patterns. For example, the logical AND operator is represented by four transformations: 0 for 00, 0 for 01, 0 for 10, and 1 for 11. In addition, when the data are seen as patterns and the operator as a pattern transformation, spatial coding of patterns follows naturally.

© 1987 Optical Society of America