The Image Disc

The ImageDisc is a system that can  "engrave" an image onto an optical disc using a laser beam recorder.

Image artwork is scanned by a photo scanner, and the image is converted to spiral coordinates so that the LBR can write the image on the spinning disc using the laser beam recorder.

I received a US patent on this device, and quite a lot of discs were made with this system.  It was a great way to make eye-catching CDs and make your product instantly recognizable.

The only downside was that you couldn't have an image and  other data in the same physical location, so the image was typically restricted to part of the disc.  Because of the high capacity of the disc, there were many discs where only a small part of the disc at the inside was used for data/music and the rest for images

Image Disc

Since the image consists of rows of tiny microscopic pits and lands, it forms a diffraction grating, and therefore the reflected light is in the form of a rainbow.

In principle, it should also be possible to create a hologram instead of a 2D image.  I am not aware of anyone who has done that.