Surpassing digital holography limits by lensless object scanning holography

Holographic flow scanning cytometry overcomes depth of focus limits and smartly adapts to microfluidic speed

Space-time digital holography (STDH) maps holograms in a hybrid space-time domain to achieve extended field of view, resolution enhanced, quantitative phase-contrast microscopy and velocimetry of flowing objects in a label-free modality. In STDH, area sensors can be replaced by compact and faster linear sensor arrays to augment the imaging throughput and to compress data from a microfluidic video sequence into one single hybrid hologram. However, in order to ensure proper imaging, the velocity of the objects in microfluidic channels has to be well-matched to the acquisition frame rate, which is the major constraint of the method. Also, imaging all the flowing samples in focus at the same time, while avoiding hydrodynamic focusing devices, is a highly desirable goal. Here we demonstrate a novel processing pipeline that addresses non-ideal flow conditions and is capable of returning the correct and extended focus phase contrast mapping of an entire microfluidic experiment in a single image. We apply this novel processing strategy to recover phase imaging of flowing HeLa cells in a lab-on-a-chip platform even when severely undersampled due to too fast flow while ensuring that all cells are in focus.

Multi-Illumination Single-Holographic-Exposure Lensless Fresnel (MISHELF) Microscopy: Principles and Biomedical Applications

Lensless holographic microscopy (LHM) comes out as a promising label-free technique since it supplies high-quality imaging and adaptive magnification in a lens-free, compact and cost-effective way. Compact sizes and reduced prices of LHMs make them a perfect instrument for point-of-care diagnosis and increase their usability in limited-resource laboratories, remote areas, and poor countries. LHM can provide excellent intensity and phase imaging when the twin image is removed. In that sense, multi-illumination single-holographic-exposure lensless Fresnel (MISHELF) microscopy appears as a single-shot and phase-retrieved imaging technique employing multiple illumination/detection channels and a fast-iterative phase-retrieval algorithm. In this contribution, we review MISHELF microscopy through the description of the principles, the analysis of the performance, the presentation of the microscope prototypes and the inclusion of the main biomedical applications reported so far.

Single-shot off-axis digital holographic system with extended field-of-view by using multiplexing method

We propose a new configuration of single-shot off-axis digital holographic system to realize double the camera field-of-view (FOV) of the existing off-axis Mech-Zehnder type holographic setup. The double FOV is obtained by double spatial frequency multiplexing of two different areas of an object beam by inserting a Fresnel bi-prism in it, which divides the object beam into two, both carrying different object information. The image sensor is placed at the plane where these two different FOVs overlap so as to record simultaneously two parts of the wavefront of the object in a single-shot. The multiplexed hologram is carrying two interferometric images corresponding to two different FOVs of the object which are modulated with two different spatial carrier frequencies. The feasibility of the proposed digital holographic system is experimentally demonstrated by imaging two different areas of a resolution test target. The limitation of the proposed system and a method to overcome it, are also discussed. The proposed system is useful in a wide range of applications including microscopy and optical metrology.

Resolution and Contrast Enhancement for Lensless Digital Holographic Microscopy and Its Application in Biomedicine

An important imaging technique in biomedicine, the conventional optical microscopy relies on relatively complicated and bulky lens and alignment mechanics. Based on the Gabor holography, the lensless digital holographic microscopy has the advantages of light weight and low cost. It has developed rapidly and received attention in many fields. However, the finite pixel size at the sensor plane limits the spatial resolution. In this study, we first review the principle of lensless digital holography, then go over some methods to improve image contrast and discuss the methods to enhance the image resolution of the lensless holographic image. Moreover, the applications of lensless digital holographic microscopy in biomedicine are reviewed. Finally, we look forward to the future development and prospect of lensless digital holographic technology.

Dehydration of plant cells shoves nuclei rotation allowing for 3D phase-contrast tomography

Single-cell phase-contrast tomography promises to become decisive for studying 3D intracellular structures in biology. It involves probing cells with light at wide angles, which unfortunately requires complex systems. Here we show an intriguing concept based on an inherent natural process for plants biology, i.e., dehydration, allowing us to easily obtain 3D-tomography of onion-epidermal cells' nuclei. In fact, the loss of water reduces the turgor pressure and we recognize it induces significant rotation of cells' nuclei. Thanks to the holographic focusing flexibility and an ad-hoc angles' tracking algorithm, we combine different phase-contrast views of the nuclei to retrieve their 3D refractive index distribution. Nucleolus identification capability and a strategy for measuring morphology, dry mass, biovolume, and refractive index statistics are reported and discussed. This new concept could revolutionize the investigation in plant biology by enabling dynamic 3D quantitative and label-free analysis at sub-nuclear level using a conventional holographic setup.

Reconstruction method of a ptychographic dataset with unknown positions

Wavefield drift or wobbling occurs quite often in coherent scanning systems such as satellite laser communication, laser pointing of high-power lasers, or microscopy. The uncertainty of wavefront positions might result in blurred images or large measurement errors. Here we propose an iterative approach that can retrieve both the drift positions and complex-valued distribution of the wavefield from a ptychographic diffraction intensity dataset. We demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the method in numerical simulation and an optical experiment. The method requires little a priori knowledge and thus would open up new opportunities in many fields.

General method for complex-wave fields registration with high fidelity

In the field of optical imaging, the image registration method could be applied to realize a large field of view along with high resolution. The traditional image registration methods are mostly conceived for intensity images and might fail for complex-valued images. Especially, those methods do not account for the random phase offset associated with phase. In this paper, we proposed a general method for complex-wave field registration. A similar procedure has been proposed for the reconstruction of the ptychographic dataset, but here is modified for the registration of general wave fields. The method can efficiently separate the illumination and object function, refine the positions of each wavefront, and thus provide a stitched wide-field object wave with high fidelity. Simulation and experimental results applied to register the wave fields obtained from digital holographic microscopy are given to verify the feasibility of the method. This method would have potential applications in large-field high-resolution microscopy, adaptive imaging, remote sensing and the measurement of structured optical fields.

Long-term holographic phase-contrast time lapse reveals cytoplasmic circulation in dehydrating plant cells

The intracellular dynamics of onion epidermal cells during the dehydration process is observed by holographic microscopy. Both the nucleus and cytoplasm are accurately revealed by quantitative phase imaging while dehydration takes place. Indeed, we notice that the contrast of phase images increases with the decrease in cellular water content. We foresee that such a dehydrating process can be effective for improving phase contrast, thus permitting better imaging of plant cells with the scope of learning more about cellular dynamics and related phenomena. Exploiting this concept, we observe intracellular cytoplasmic circulation and transport of biological material.

Resolution gain in space-time digital holography by self-assembling of the object frequencies

Space-time digital holography (STDH) exploits the object motion to record the hologram in a hybrid ST domain. This representation adds new capabilities to conventional DH, e.g., unlimited field of view and variable phase shifting. This is the best candidate for imaging biological samples flowing in microfluidic channels. Here, we show that STDH is able to improve the spatial resolution as well. Different from other super-resolution approaches, stitching between holograms or their spectra is no longer required. Moreover, we introduce a new oblique STDH modality to record and process hybrid ST representations. This allows improving resolution in 2D with one single object scan, paving the way to the use of STDH for super-resolution imaging onboard microfluidic devices.

Full field-of-view digital lens-free holography for weak-scattering objects based on grating modulation

Grating-based single-shot digital lens-free holography with spatial spectral multiplexing is proposed to realize full field-of-view (FOV) imaging for weak-scattering objects. Multiple object waves are generated by a one-dimensional grating that is placed in near contact with the object to avoid the cross talk among different diffraction orders during reconstruction. A multiplexed off-axis hologram is created by interference between the object waves and reference wave and captured by an image sensor in one shot. Multiple imaging areas corresponding to the captured object waves can be simultaneously retrieved during reconstruction. A formula which guarantees full FOV imaging without cross talk or information loss is presented. The imaging experiments of a USAF resolution target are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of this method.

Superresolved spatially multiplexed interferometric microscopy

Superresolution capability by angular and time multiplexing is implemented onto a regular microscope. The technique, named superresolved spatially multiplexed interferometric microscopy (S2MIM), follows our previously reported SMIM technique [Opt. Express22, 14929 (2014)OPEXFF1094-408710.1364/OE.22.014929, J. Biomed. Opt.21, 106007 (2016)JBOPFO1083-366810.1117/1.JBO.21.10.106007] improved with superresolved imaging. All together, S2MIM updates a commercially available non-holographic microscope into a superresolved holographic one. Validation is presented for an Olympus BX-60 upright microscope with resolution test targets.

Compact, cost-effective and field-portable microscope prototype based on MISHELF microscopy

We report on a reduced cost, portable and compact prototype design of lensless holographic microscope with an illumination/detection scheme based on wavelength multiplexing, working with single hologram acquisition and using a fast convergence algorithm for image processing. All together, MISHELF (initials coming from Multi-Illumination Single-Holographic-Exposure Lensless Fresnel) microscopy allows the recording of three Fresnel domain diffraction patterns in a single camera snap-shot incoming from illuminating the sample with three coherent lights at once. Previous implementations have proposed an illumination/detection procedure based on a tuned (illumination wavelengths centered at the maximum sensitivity of the camera detection channels) configuration but here we report on a detuned (non-centered ones) scheme resulting in prototype miniaturization and cost reduction. Thus, MISHELF microscopy in combination with a novel and fast iterative algorithm allows high-resolution (μm range) phase-retrieved (twin image elimination) quantitative phase imaging of dynamic events (video rate recording speed). The performance of this microscope prototype is validated through experiments using both amplitude (USAF resolution test) and complex (live swine sperm cells and flowing microbeads) samples. The proposed method becomes in an alternative instrument improving some capabilities of existing lensless microscopes.

Spatially multiplexed interferometric microscopy with partially coherent illumination

We have recently reported on a simple, low cost, and highly stable way to convert a standard microscope into a holographic one [Opt. Express 22, 14929 (2014)]. The method, named spatially multiplexed interferometric microscopy (SMIM), proposes an off-axis holographic architecture implemented onto a regular (nonholographic) microscope with minimum modifications: the use of coherent illumination and a properly placed and selected one-dimensional diffraction grating. In this contribution, we report on the implementation of partially (temporally reduced) coherent illumination in SMIM as a way to improve quantitative phase imaging. The use of low coherence sources forces the application of phase shifting algorithm instead of off-axis holographic recording to recover the sample’s phase information but improves phase reconstruction due to coherence noise reduction. In addition, a less restrictive field of view limitation (1/2) is implemented in comparison with our previously reported scheme (1/3). The proposed modification is experimentally validated in a regular Olympus BX-60 upright microscope considering a wide range of samples (resolution test, microbeads, swine sperm cells, red blood cells, and prostate cancer cells).

Optofluidic holographic microscopy with custom field of view (FoV) using a linear array detector

Simple and effective imaging strategies are of utmost interest for applications on a lab-on-chip scale. In fact, the majority of diagnostic tools for medical as well as biotechnological studies still employ image-based approaches. Having onboard the chip a compact but powerful imaging apparatus with multiple imaging capabilities, such as 3D dynamic focusing along the optical axis, unlimited field of view (FoV) and double outputs, namely, intensity and quantitative phase-contrast maps of biological objects, is of extreme importance for the next generation of Lab-on-a-Chip (LoC) devices. Here we present a coherent 3D microscopy approach with a holographic modality that is specifically suitable for studying biological samples while they simply flow along microfluidic paths. The LoC device is equipped with a compact linear array detector to capture and generate a new conceptual type of a digital hologram in the space-time domain, named here as Space-Time Digital Hologram (STDH). The reported results show that the method is a promising diagnostic tool for optofluidic investigations of biological specimens.

Encoding multiple holograms for speckle-noise reduction in optical display

In digital holography (DH) a mixture of speckle and incoherent additive noise, which appears in numerical as well as in optical reconstruction, typically degrades the information of the object wavefront. Several methods have been proposed in order to suppress the noise contributions during recording or even during the reconstruction steps. Many of them are based on the incoherent combination of multiple holographic reconstructions achieving remarkable improvement, but only in the numerical reconstruction i.e. visualization on a pc monitor. So far, it has not been shown the direct synthesis of a digital hologram which provides the denoised optical reconstruction. Here, we propose a new effective method for encoding in a single complex wavefront the contribution of multiple incoherent reconstructions, thus allowing to obtain a single synthetic digital hologram that show significant speckle-reduction when optically projected by a Spatial Light Modulator (SLM).

Spatio-temporal scanning modality for synthesizing interferograms and digital holograms

We investigate the spatio-temporal scanning of a single-pixel row for building up synthetic interferograms or digital holograms, shifted each other of a desired phase step. This unusual recording modality exploits the object movement to synthesize interferograms with extended Field of View and improved noise contrast. We report the theoretical formulation of the synthetizing recording process and experimental evidence of various cases demonstrating quantitative phase retrieval by adopting this intrinsic phase-shifting procedure. The proposed method could be particularly suited in all cases where the object shift is an intrinsic feature of the investigated system, as e.g. in microfluidics imaging.

Lensless object scanning holography for two-dimensional mirror-like and diffuse reflective objects

Recently proposed lensless object scanning holography (LOSH) [Opt. Express 20, 9382 (2012)] is a fully lensless method capable of improving the image quality in digital Fourier holography applied to one-dimensional (1D) reflective objects and it involves a very simplified experimental setup. LOSH is based on the recording and digital postprocessing of a set of digital lensless Fourier transform holograms, which finally results in a synthetic image with improved resolution, field-of-view (FOV), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and depth of field. In this paper, LOSH is extended to the cases of two-dimensional (2D) mirror-like and 1D diffuse-based objects. For 2D mirror-like objects, the experimental results show an impressive image quality improvement over a factor of 3 in FOV, SNR, and resolution, as good as that obtained for the 1D case but in two dimensions. For 1D diffuse-based objects, in general the speckle affects the image resolution, which will not be only a function of the aperture size. In this case, increasing the aperture produces a decrease of the speckle size. Moreover, due to the overlapping of speckles between successive images, different types of digital processing can be applied to obtain the final synthetic image: fully incoherent, fully coherent, and partially coherent. The last, arising from the incoherent sum of several independent sets of coherently added images, provides the best improvement in the resolution. Experimental results for both types of objects are presented.

Speckle denoising in digital holography by nonlocal means filtering

We demonstrate the effectiveness of the nonlocal means (NLM) filter for speckle denoising in digital holography. The speckle noise adapted version of the NLM filter is compared with other common speckle denoising filters and is found to give better visual and quantitative results.

Superresolved and field-of-view extended digital holography with particle encoding

We present a new configuration for superresolution (SR) as well as for field-of-view (FOV) extension in a digital holography concept based on random movement of sparse metallic particles. In the SR configuration, the particles are in proximity to the recorded object, while in the FOV configuration, the particles are in proximity to the hologram plane. The particles' movement encodes the high spatial features in the plane of their movement. This high-resolution information can later be decoded by proper numerical postprocessing that either remedies the resolution limitations in the object plane (or the limited NA of the lens) or extends the FOV in the object plane.