HoloGen: Synthetic Hologram Dataset Toolkit

The HoloGen toolkit generates paired object-domain images and their inline or off-axis holograms for machine learning workflows.

See the first dataset (100k, 157.4GB!) generated with the HoloGen in HuggingFace 🤗

Features

• Binary object-domain sample generation with diverse analytic shapes
• Complex field support for amplitude, phase, and mixed object types
• Strategy-based hologram creation supporting inline and off-axis methods
• Reconstruction pipeline for object-domain recovery from holograms
• Dataset writer for NumPy bundles and preview imagery with multiple field representations
• Realistic noise and aberration modeling for physically accurate simulations

Quickstart

Install the package and its hologen command:

uv tool install .            # or: pip install .

Generate the dataset with the default, cited recipe (25,000 holograms of 224 x 224 pixels in four noise configurations):

hologen generate --output dataset-224

Common options override the recipe; run hologen generate --help for all of them:

hologen generate --output small --samples 1000 --resolution 128 --seed 1
hologen generate --output laser --config ideal --config camera_laser_speckle

The folder also receives recipe.toml, the exact recipe the dataset was made from.

Recipes

Every physical value (geometry, camera, speckle) is part of a recipe. Write the default recipe, with the unit and source of each value, edit it and generate from it:

hologen recipe --output paper.toml
hologen generate --recipe paper.toml --output dataset-paper

Values missing from a recipe file keep their defaults, and unknown keys are rejected. From Python, use hologen.dataset.default_recipe() and load_recipe(path).

Noise Model

Every recording passes through a model of a real camera (Sony ICX267 CCD, EMVA 1288): shot noise, dark current, read noise and a 12-bit ADC. The light source adds speckle (Goodman's model). The dataset has four configurations of equal size:

Configuration	Noise	rms deviation from the noise-free hologram
ideal	none (reference)	0.02%
camera	shot + dark + read + ADC	1.6%
camera_led_speckle	camera + speckle contrast 0.014	2.1%
camera_laser_speckle	camera + speckle contrast 0.12	12.1%

To see each noise source live, open an interactive explorer:

hologen explore speckle          # contrast and grain size
hologen explore shot-noise       # exposure and saturation
hologen explore dark-current     # temperature and exposure time
hologen explore readout          # read noise and ADC bit depth
hologen explore speckle my_photo.png --save speckle.png

Licensing

Released under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.