Transforming Monochromatic Images into 3D Holographic Stereograms through Depth-Map Extraction

Traditional holographic printing techniques prove inadequate when only input data is available. Therefore, this paper proposes a new artificial-intelligence-based process for generating digital holographic stereograms from a single black-and-white photograph. This method eliminates the need for stereo cameras, photogrammetry, or 3D models. In this approach, a convolutional neural network and deep convolutional neural field model are used for image colorization and a depth-map estimation, respectively. Subsequently, the colored image and depth map are used to generate the multi-view images required for creating holographic stereograms. This method efficiently preserves the visual characteristics of the original black-and-white images in the final digital holographic portraits. This provides a new and accessible method for holographic reconstruction using limited data, enabling the generation of 3D holographic content from existing images. Experiments were conducted using black-and-photographs of two historical figures and highly realistic holograms were obtained successfully. This study has significant implications for cultural preservation, personal archiving, and the generation of life-like holographic images with minimal input data. By bridging the gap between historical photographic sources and modern holographic techniques, our approach opens up new possibilities for memory preservation and visual storytelling.