ONE-STEP MULTICHANNEL PATTERN-RECOGNITION BASED ON THE PIXELATED STRUCTURE OF A SPATIAL LIGHT-MODULATOR

We present an architecture in which a multichannel correlator can perf orm simultaneous optical pattern recognition. Processing in parallel i s made possible by use of the different diffraction orders produced by the pixelated structure of the liquid-crystal spatial light modulator employed to display the input scene. We codify additional quadratic p hases in the filters to separate the correlation information correspon ding to each channel. We demonstrate that the system can recognize dif ferent targets simultaneously. Good agreement between experimental and numerically simulated results is obtained. (C) 1998 Optical Society o f America.