A new method for high-fidelity holographic storage is suggested. A two-dimensional optimized phase mask is adopted during hologram recording. The EBP terror back propagation) method and phase retrieval algorithm are used for the phase mask design. Simulation results show that reconstruction error is significantly reduced compared with that of random phase mask and no phase mask, while the spectral uniformity is also improved. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.