Real-time millimeter wave holography with an arrayed detector (article)

Abstract

Millimeter and terahertz wave imaging has emerged as a powerful tool for applications such as security screening, biomedical imaging, and material analysis. However, intensity images alone are often insufficient for detecting variations in the dielectric constant of a sample, and extraction of material properties without additional phase information requires extensive prior knowledge of the sample. Digital holography provides a means for intensity-only detectors to reconstruct both amplitude and phase images. Here we utilize a commercially available source and detector array, both operating at room temperature, to perform digital holography in real-time for the first time in the mm-wave band (at 290 GHz). We compare the off-axis and phase-shifting approaches to digital holography and discuss their trade-offs and practical challenges in this regime. Owing to the low pixel count, we find phase-shifting holography to be the most practical and high fidelity approach for such commercial mm-wave cameras even under real-time operational requirements.