Abstract

The optical disk is a simple computer addressable binary storage medium with very high capacity.^[1] More than 10¹⁰ bits of information can be recorded on a 12cm diameter optical disk. The natural two dimensional format of the data recorded on optical disk makes this media particularly attractive for the storage of images and holograms, while parallel access provides a convenient mechanism through which such data may be retrieved. Parallel access to data stored on optical disk has been shown to provide interesting solutions to problems in neural networks, database retrieval and pattern recognition^[2] In this paper we will discuss a closed loop associative optical memory based on the optical disk. When presented with a partial or noisy version of one of the images stored on the optical disk, the optical system evolves to a stable state in which those stored images which best match the input are temporally locked in the loop.

© 1991 Optical Society of America