Highly contrasted Bessel fringe minima visualization for time-averaged vibration profilometry using Hilbert transform two-frame processing

Fringe analysis: single-shot or two-frames? Quantitative phase imaging answers

Conditions of the digital recording of the fringe pattern determine the phase reconstruction procedure, which in turn directly shapes the final accuracy and throughput of the full-field (non-scanning) optical measurement technique and defines the system capabilities. In this way, the fringe pattern analysis plays a crucial role in the ubiquitous optical measurements and thus is under constant development focused on high temporal/spatial resolution. It is especially valuable in the quantitative phase imaging technology, which emerged in the high-contrast label-free biomedical microscopy. In this paper, I apply recently blossomed two-frame phase-shifting techniques to the QPI and merge them with advanced adaptive interferogram pre-filtering algorithms. Next, I comprehensively test such frameworks against classical and adaptive single-shot methods applied for phase reconstruction in dynamic QPI enabling highest phase time-space-bandwidth product. The presented study systematically tackles important question: what is the gain, if any, in QPI realized by recording two phase-shifted interferograms? Counterintuitively, the results show that single-shot demodulation exhibited higher phase reconstruction accuracy than two-frame phase-shifting methods in low and medium interferogram signal-to-noise ratio regimes. Thus, the single-shot approach is promoted due to not only high temporal resolution but also larger phase-information throughput. Additionally, in the majority of scenarios, the best option is to shift the paradigm and employ two-frame pre-filtering rather than two-frame phase retrieval. Experimental fringe analysis in QPI of LSEC/RWPE cell lines successfully corroborated all novel numerical findings. Hence, the presented numerical-experimental research advances the important field of fringe analysis solutions for optical full-field measurement methods with widespread bio-engineering applications.

Full-field vibration profilometry using time-averaged interference microscopy aided by variational analysis

Full-field vibration testing is indispensable in characterization of micro-electro-mechanical components. Time-averaged interference (TAI) microscopy is a very capable and accurate vibration profilometry technique. It employs natural all-optical multiplexing of required information, i.e., recorded interferogram is amplitude-modulated by the Bessel pattern, which in turn encodes spatial distribution of vibration amplitude in its underlying phase function. We propose a complete end-to-end numerical scheme for efficient and robust vibration amplitude map demodulation based on the variational data-analysis paradigm. First, interferogram is variationally pre-filtered and complex analytic-interferogram is generated, exploiting the Hilbert spiral transform. The amplitude term of analytic-interferogram is accessed for Besselogram, i.e., TAI amplitude modulation distribution. Next, the Besselogram is variationally pre-filtered and complex analytic-Besselogram is calculated applying the Hilbert spiral transform. Finally, the phase term of the analytic-Besselogram is determined, unwrapped and post-filtered to achieve spatial distribution of vibration amplitude. Proposed approach is verified using simulated interferograms and corroborated upon experimental vibration testing. Reported method compares favorably with the reference Hilbert-Huang transform-based method. The improvement was gained by adding two new steps to the calculation path: (1) additional removal of the interferogram's residual background and noise and (2) variational based vibration amplitude map error correction method.

Monitoring of photochemically induced changes in phase-modulating samples with digital holographic microscopy

This paper analyzes the performance of single-shot digital holographic microscopy for rapid characterization of static step-index structures in transparent polymer materials and for online monitoring of the photoinduced polymerization dynamics. The experiments are performed with a modified Mach-Zehnder transmission digital holographic microscope of high stability (phase accuracy of 0.69°) and of high magnification (of ≈90×). Use of near-infrared illumination allows both nondestructive examination of the manufactured samples and monitoring of optically induced processes in a photosensitive material concurrently with its excitation. The accuracy of the method for a precise sample's topography evaluation is studied on an example of microchannel sets fabricated via two-photon polymerization and is supported by reference measurements with an atomic force microscope. The applicability of the approach for dynamic measurements is proved via online monitoring of the refractive index evolution in a photoresin layer illuminated with a focused laser beam at 405 nm. High correlation between the experimental results and a kinetics model for the photopolymerization process is achieved.

Single-shot two-frame π-shifted spatially multiplexed interference phase microscopy

Single-shot, two-frame, π-shifted spatially multiplexed interference microscopy (π-SMIM) is presented as an improvement to previous SMIM implementations, introducing a versatile, robust, fast, and accurate method for cumbersome, noisy, and low-contrast phase object analysis. The proposed π-SMIM equips a commercially available nonholographic microscope with a high-speed (video frame rate) enhanced quantitative phase imaging (QPI) capability by properly placing a beam-splitter in the microscope embodiment to simultaneously (in a single shot) record two holograms mutually phase shifted by π radians at the expense of reducing the field of view. Upon subsequent subtractive superimposition of holograms, a π-hologram is generated with reduced background and improved modulation of interference fringes. These features determine superior phase retrieval quality, obtained by employing the Hilbert spiral transform on the π-hologram, as compared with a single low-quality (low signal-to-noise ratio) hologram analysis. In addition, π-SMIM enables accurate in-vivo analysis of high dynamic range phase objects, otherwise measurable only in static regime using time-consuming phase-shifting. The technique has been validated utilizing a 20  ×    /  0.46 NA objective in a regular Olympus BX-60 upright microscope for QPI of different lines of prostate cancer cells and flowing microbeads.

Phase retrieval in two-shot phase-shifting interferometry based on phase shift estimation in a local mask

Fringe analysis in two-shot phase-shifting interferometry is important but meets challenges due to a limited number of images, corrupting noise, and background modulation. Here we propose an effective algorithm for phase retrieval from two interferograms with unknown phase shifts. The algorithm first evaluates the phase shift in a local mask through phase fitting and global optimization and then computes a full-field phase map using an arctangent function. Since the phase shift evaluation is performed within a local mask, the algorithm is fast compared with conventional optimization-based algorithms and typically needs tens of seconds to complete the processing. Computer simulation and experimental results show that the proposed algorithm has excellent performance compared with state-of-the-art algorithms. A complete software package of the algorithm in MATLAB is available at http://two-shot.sourceforge.io/.

Evaluation of adaptively enhanced two-shot fringe pattern phase and amplitude demodulation methods

Phase-shifting interferometry is a standard tool in optical metrology. Most frequently, it needs three or more interferograms to solve the system of fringe equations for phase or amplitude retrieval, which limits its time resolution. Recently, the topic of two-shot, arbitrary-phase-step fringe pattern phase and amplitude demodulation has been flourishing and attracting attention with several novel and interesting methods being proposed. In this work, we evaluate six up-to-date two-shot phase-shifting methods analyzing their main error sources and proposing efficient ways to minimize their influence by adaptive filtering using the Hilbert-Huang transform.

Two-frame phase-shifting interferometry for testing optical surfaces

Standard phase-shifting interferometry (PSI) generally requires collecting at least three phase-shifted interferograms to extract the physical quantity being measured. Here, we propose the application of a simple two-frame PSI for the testing of a range of optical surfaces, including flats, spheres, and aspheres. The two-frame PSI extracts modulated phase from two randomly phase-shifted interferograms using a Gram-Schmidt algorithm, and can work in either null testing or non-null testing modes. Since only two interferograms are used for phase demodulation and the phase shift amount can be random, requirements on environmental conditions and phase shifter calibration are greatly relaxed. Experimental results of three different mirrors suggest that the two-frame PSI can achieve comparable measurement precision with conventional multi-frame PSI, but has faster data acquisition speed and less stringent hardware requirements. The proposed two-frame PSI expands the flexibility of PSI and holds great potential in many applications.

Demodulation of two-shot fringe patterns with random phase shifts by use of orthogonal polynomials and global optimization

We propose a simple and robust phase demodulation algorithm for two-shot fringe patterns with random phase shifts. Based on a smoothness assumption, the phase to be recovered is decomposed into a linear combination of finite terms of orthogonal polynomials, and the expansion coefficients and the phase shift are exhaustively searched through global optimization. The technique is insensitive to noise or defects, and is capable of retrieving phase from low fringe-number (less than one) or low-frequency interferograms. It can also cope with interferograms with very small phase shifts. The retrieved phase is continuous and no further phase unwrapping process is required. The method is expected to be promising to process interferograms with regular fringes, which are common in optical shop testing. Computer simulation and experimental results are presented to demonstrate the performance of the algorithm.

Two-shot fringe pattern phase-amplitude demodulation using Gram-Schmidt orthonormalization with Hilbert-Huang pre-filtering

Gram-Schmidt orthonormalization is a very fast and efficient method for the fringe pattern phase demodulation. It requires only two arbitrarily phase-shifted frames. Images are treated as vectors and upon orthogonal projection of one fringe vector onto another the quadrature fringe pattern pair is obtained. Orthonormalization process is very susceptible, however, to noise, uneven background and amplitude modulation fluctuations. The Hilbert-Huang transform based preprocessing is proposed to enhance fringe pattern phase demodulation by filtering out the spurious noise and background illumination and performing fringe normalization. The Gram-Schmidt orthonormalization process error analysis is provided and its filtering-expanded capabilities are corroborated analyzing DSPI fringes and performing amplitude demodulation of Bessel fringes. Synthetic and experimental fringe pattern analyses presented to validate the proposed technique show that it compares favorably with other pre-filtering schemes, i.e., Gaussian filtering and continuous wavelet transform.

Optically-sectioned two-shot structured illumination microscopy with Hilbert-Huang processing

We introduce a fast, simple, adaptive and experimentally robust method for reconstructing background-rejected optically-sectioned images using two-shot structured illumination microscopy. Our innovative data demodulation method needs two grid-illumination images mutually phase shifted by π (half a grid period) but precise phase displacement between two frames is not required. Upon frames subtraction the input pattern with increased grid modulation is obtained. The first demodulation stage comprises two-dimensional data processing based on the empirical mode decomposition for the object spatial frequency selection (noise reduction and bias term removal). The second stage consists in calculating high contrast image using the two-dimensional spiral Hilbert transform. Our algorithm effectiveness is compared with the results calculated for the same input data using structured-illumination (SIM) and HiLo microscopy methods. The input data were collected for studying highly scattering tissue samples in reflectance mode. Results of our approach compare very favorably with SIM and HiLo techniques.

Processing and phase analysis of fringe patterns with contrast reversals

A method for demodulating fringe patterns containing contrast reversals is proposed. It consists of two steps. First, the absolute value of the fringe intensity distribution with its background removed is calculated. Then, two dimensional continuous wavelet transform with enhanced ridge extraction algorithm is applied to extract the fringe phase map. Proposed approach allows to dispose of phase jumps along the contrast reversal bands. The method requires only one image and has no special demands concerning the fringe pattern design. Method validity and robustness is confirmed using experimentally acquired time-averaged interferograms of vibrating silicon micromembranes.