Nobrega 1

Brandon Nobrega
Professor Deborah Dagher
UWRT-1102
5 April 2015
I would have never thought that while doing an assignment for a writing course
that I would find a topic that grabbed my attention as much as this did. I was in the
middle of filling out my interest inventory when I came across an example of a topic
which was holograms. Holograms have never interested me before until I actually had t
do some research on a topic and figure out if it was something I wanted to follow up on.
My interest was completely struck when I found out how futuristic allot of these
holograms sound.
Holograms really are the future and they hold so much important data that people
fail to realize the importance of. They have so many applicable abilities that allow them
to affect all types of lifestyles. They are used from scientific research all the way to
medical applications by helping doctors study the human body more in depth. The
importance of holograms has not been realized yet because they havent been
commercially advertised or put out so the public can see exactly what roles they play in
the world today. The difference that holograms will make in peoples lives will soon be
realized, the biggest one I can think of is simplicity. Simplicity and innovation is the
main difference I can see happening in the future which are two characteristics that our
nation has thrived upon since our existence.

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A man that is a big digital hologram enthusiast seems to be one of the main
contributors that is continuously researching the topic and writing articles about it. This
man is named Oliver Bimber, in his firs couple sentences of his article about
augmenting holograms he says Many areas in science, entertainment, education, and
engineering would be unimaginable without the aid of 2D or 3D computer graphics,
(Bimber, 2006). This shows how enthusiastic he is upon this subject and how I feel he
was a very credible source to use. Reading his article and feeling his energy about this
subject and how impactful he thinks it will be in the future is inspiring and only drives me
to want to get more interested into it. His article about digital holograms and how they
are being used to store dinosaur bones served as a great starting point for me and
helped me realize where I wanted to go next with my research.
That was the true roots to the whole extended inquiry project. After researching
the digital holograms I was able to think of other applications and or effects that
holograms could have and did some further research. After seeing Oliver Bimbers work
I wanted to see what else he had researched. I came upon an article that was a little
more in depth with the merging of holograms and computer graphics to project a 3D
object. This source was about two years earlier than his previous one so it helped me
see his development in his research by back tracking his steps. This article included
brief references to dinosaur bones, but more references to how the whole system
worked. It helped me realize exactly how these scientists got computer graphics to
work with holograms to come up with a brilliant product.
In his writing I read, This technology can record and reconstruct a 3D scene with
almost no loss in quality, (Bimber 2004). By reading this, I was now curious as to what

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they mean by creating a 3D scene. When I think of a scene, I think of something that
you are constantly visualizing. This lead to my next question about if these types of
systems can be minimized and be worn on your head.
My next source/question included head worn displays that either projected
holograms or were used in a new technological advancement. My focus though was on
the holograms and how they were affecting everything around our daily lives. The head
worn displays that did not project holograms were more like binoculars but had
holographic like technologies built into the display to benefit the users capabilities. The
biggest example of the head worn displays that did not project holograms were products
that are used in the military. This source was a bit of a sidetrack from my original
question because its main focus was not on holograms. But, I felt it helped me gain
another viewpoint on a technology that utilizes the optimization of light and reorienting
how we see things.
The final point that I got at was the application of holograms to the human body
and benefits it provides to our health. The biomedical side of holograms really
interested me because it is not an entertainment, but it is something that actually
matters and something that is considered actually beneficial to our society. Instead of
researching something cool I was now researching something that was interesting and
that could really help doctors in creating prosthetics and any application to the human
body. The process is pretty much the usage of a hologram to copy the subject you are
working on so that you dont need the actual person there deceasing the volume of
appointments along with the time it takes to create something that applies to the human
body.

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I was now able to center my research on something I really thought would make
a big impact on the world and was a more recent topic. Our most complex hologram to
date is a full-length human anatomy hologram created from a synthetic 3D model of a
female, (Khan, 2013 ). This was from the article on the use of holograms in biomedical
study and it is an example of how far this technology has come from analyzing dead
dinosaur fossils to now getting a full 3D representation of the human body. The
possibilities for this technology are endless and they are only being used for good
causes. To me, studying the human body has never been more interesting than being
able to actually have a full sized 3D print of yourself.

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Sources:

Khan, Javid. "3D Digital Holograms Visualize Biomedical Applications." Biomedical

Imaging (2013): 55-58. Web. 10 Mar. 2015.
Bimber, Oliver, and Simon Julier, eds. "Augmenting Holograms." (2006): 12-17. Web.
08 Mar. 2015
Bimber, Oliver. "Combining Optical Holograms with Ineractive Computer Graphics."
(2004): 85-91. Web. 08 Mar. 2015.