Multiplexing and de-multiplexing of digital holograms recorded in microscopic configuration

We investigate the possibility to multiplexing and de-multiplexing numerically digital holograms recorded by means of a Mach–Zehnder interferometric microscope. The digital holograms are multiplexed and de-multiplexed thanks to the unique property of the digital holography to numerically manage the complex wavefields in different reconstruction planes. Two kind of multiplexing techniques are investigated. The first one allows to multiplex up to hundreds of digital holograms retrieving correctly quantitative information about their amplitude and phase maps. This technique can be used to optimize the storage of a large number of digital holograms or their transmission process from a recording head to a remote display unit. The second method consists in the angular multiplexing and de-multiplexing of several digital holograms. This technique has been performed rotating numerically one hologram at different angles and adding all the rotated holograms to obtain a single synthetic digital hologram. However, for this technique, a multiplexed digital hologram can be also obtained rotating the CCD array during the holograms recording process. The distortions caused by the multiplexing/de-multiplexing procedures has been evaluated for both the techniques.