Investigating the use of the acousto-optic effect for acoustic holography

Recent studies have demonstrated that the acousto-optic effect, that is, the interaction between sound and light, can be used as a means to visualize acoustic fields in the audible frequency range. The changes of density caused by sound waves propagating in air induce phase shifts to a laser beam that travels through the acoustic field. This phenomenon can in practice be captured with a laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV), and the pressure distribution of the acoustic field can be reconstructed using tomography. The present work investigates the potential of the acousto-optic effect in acoustic holography. Two different holographic methods are examined for this purpose. One method first reconstructs the hologram plane using acousto-optic tomography and then propagates it using conventional near-field acoustic holography (NAH). The other method exploits the so-called Fourier Slice Theorem and bases all the calculations of the holographic algorithm on the Radon transform of the acoustic field. The validity of the proposed methods is examined in a simple study case by means of simulations and preliminary measurements.