Massive parallel optical pattern recognition and retrieval via a two-stagehigh-capacity multichannel holographic random access memory system

The multistage holographic optical random access memory (HORAM) system repo rted recently by Liu et al. provides a new degree of freedom for improving storage capacity. We further present a theoretical and practical analysis o f the HORAM system with experimental results. Our discussions include the s ystem design and geometrical requirements, its applications for multichanne l pattern recognition and associative memory, the 2-D and 3-D information s torage capacity, and multichannel image storage and retrieval via VanderLug t correlator (VLC) filters and joint transform holograms. A series of exper iments are performed to demonstrate the feasibility of the multichannel pat tern recognition and image retrieval with both the VLC and joint transform correlator (JTC) architectures. The experimental results with as many as 20 25 channels show good agreement with the theoretical analysis. (C) 2000 Soc iety no Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. [S0091 -3286(00)00902-8].