Three-dimensional imaging characteristics and depth resolution in digital holographic three-dimensional imaging spectrometry

A four-dimensional impulse response function for the digital holographic three-dimensional imaging spectrometry has been fully derived in closed form. Due to its factorizing nature of the mathematical expression of four-dimensional impulse response function, three-dimensional spatial part of impulse response function directly corresponds to three-dimensional point spread function of in-line digital holography with rectangular aperture. Based on these mathematical results, this paper focuses on the investigation of spectral resolution and three-dimensional spatial resolution in digital holographic three-dimensional imaging spectrometry and digital holography. We found that the theoretical prediction agree well with the experimental results. This work suggests a new criterion and estimate method regarding three-dimensional spatial resolution of in-line digital holography.