A team of researchers at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center has developed the first true, three-dimensional, holographic movies. These movies should appear on a screen near you in about a decade. For the moment, the initial markets for this holographic television system will be in medical visualization and military applications. The system is based on regular digital light processing (DLP) micro-mirror chips, but there is a twist. Instead of using regular lights, the researchers are using laser lights, which are using a unique wavelength. And they feed the chip with interferograms coming from regular 3-D imaging applications. This unique combination leads the micro-mirrors to project a 3-D moving image that appears suspended in air, like a 3-D hologram. Read more today, or wait until 2020...

Here is the introduction of the UT Southwestern Medical Center news release about this future projection system.

In a small research laboratory at UT Southwestern Medical Center, a grainy, red movie of circling fighter jets emerges from a table-top black box, while nearby, a video of a rotating human heart hangs suspended in a tank of gooey gel.

These images - the first true, three-dimensional, holographic movies - are the brainchild of Dr. Harold "Skip" Garner, professor of biochemistry and internal medicine at UT Southwestern.

Below are three images showing the -- early -- technology at work (Credit: UT Southwestern Medical Center). You'll find more explanations below.

So when will be able to watch holographic television in our living rooms?

"An important next step is to take our proof of principle technology that we have now and move it into a commercial entity," said Dr. Garner. "We think the two initial markets will be in medical visualization and military applications, such as heads-up displays for helmets and military aircraft and coordinating battlefield information."

In the long term, Dr. Garner said, entertainment uses could include 3-D multiplayer games, theme park or advertising displays, and "Holo TV." He and his colleagues have worked with students in Southern Methodist University's Cox School of Business to develop a tentative business plan that explores the possible commercialization of the technology, focusing on medical applications.

"I predict that by the year 2020, that being the year of 'perfect vision,' we will have Holo TV in our homes," said Dr. Michael Huebschman, a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Garner's lab and one of the developers of the technology.

Back in 2005, the "What's New" section of Popular Science dated June 16, 2005, carries a special report named "The Future Starts Here," which takes "a look at five unbelievable technologies trucking toward reality" and includes a very interesting article about the "Holographic Television."

For more technical information, you should read this page about Holographic Imaging from Skip Garner's lab, which also has links to several video demonstrations.

Finally, you should read a paper published by Optics Express in March 2003, "Dynamic holographic 3-D image projection" (Vol. 11, No. 5, pp. 437-445). Here is a link to the full paper (PDF format, 9 pages, 1.69 MB). The images above are extracted from this paper.

Sources: UT Southwestern Medical Center news release, June 14, 2005; Jonathan Keats, Popular Science, June 16, 2005; and various sites