Abstract

Optical resonators are a powerful tool for object classification. Using a volume hologram to store and simultaneously probe thousands of reference images, they can take an input image and find the best matched reference object from a vast stored library. Developments in this field are proceeding rapidly in numerous laboratories^1-3. These research efforts are confined, however, to all-optical resonator systems which suffer from the speed and gain limitations of photorefractives, and from the lack of shift invariance of the inner-product function performed when the input image is used to read a volume hologram.

© 1995 Optical Society of America