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Unborn baby ultrasounds turned into 3D holograms by new Pioneer printer

Unborn baby ultrasounds turned into 3D holograms by new Pioneer printer

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Pioneer 3D hologram of baby ultrasound (Credit: DigInfo TV/YouTube)
Pioneer 3D hologram of baby ultrasound (Credit: DigInfo TV/YouTube)

Late last year, the struggling Japanese electronics company Pioneer announced a strange new product: a "compact" full-color printer for making 3D holographic images. About the size of a large briefcase, the printer now offers a new function — turning flat ultrasound images of unborn babies into 3D holograms. The capability, which takes two hours, was demonstrated last month at the Optics and Photonics exhibition in Yokohama, Japan, and captured on video by DigInfo TV:

Unfortunately for all those expecting parents hoping to immortalize their child's likeness in the form of a sticker from the 1990s, it doesn't seem as though this will be available to consumers anytime soon. Pioneer told reporters last year that the printer itself was just a research and development project without any concrete plan for commercialization. It's unclear for now if Pioneer has any plans to make this new ultrasound hologram printing service available outside this video demo and if so, when and where, but we've reached out to the company for more information and will update when we hear back.