Compact and stable real-time dual-wavelength digital holographic microscopy with a long-working distance objective

Lensless single-shot dual-wavelength digital holography for industrial metrology

We demonstrate lensless single-shot dual-wavelength digital holography for high-speed 3D imaging in industrial inspection. Single-shot measurement is realized by combining off-axis digital holography and spatial frequency multiplexing of the two wavelengths on the detector. The system has 9.1 µm lateral resolution and a 50 µm unambiguous depth range. We determine the theoretical accuracy of off-axis dual-wavelength phase reconstruction for the case of shot-noise-limited detection. Experimental results show good agreement with the proposed model. The system is applied to industrial metrology of calibrated test samples and chip manufacturing.

Convenient dual-wavelength digital holography based on orthogonal polarization strategy with a Wollaston prism

Dual-wavelength digital holography effectively expands the measurement range of digital holography, but it increases the complexity of optical system due to non-common-path of two wavelengths. Here, by using orthogonal polarization strategy, we present a dual-wavelength digital holography based on a Wollaston prism (DWDH-WP) to separate the reference beams of two wavelengths and realize the common-path of two wavelengths. A Wollaston prism is inset into the reference beam path of the off-axis digital holography system, so two orthogonal-polarized reference beams of two different wavelengths separated at different directions are generated. Then a dual-wavelength multiplexed interferogram with orthogonal interference fringes is captured by using a monochrome camera, in which both the polarization orientations and the interference fringe orientations of two wavelengths are orthogonal, so the spectral crosstalk of two wavelengths with arbitrary wavelength difference can be avoided. Compared with the existing DWDH method, the proposed DWDH-WP method can conveniently realize the common-path of the reference beams of two wavelengths, so it reveals obvious advantages in spectral separation, spectral crosstalk, system simplification, and adjustment flexibility. Both effectiveness and flexibility of the proposed DWDH-WP method are demonstrated by the phase measurement of the HeLa cell and vortex phase plate.

Practical approach for optimizing off-axis telecentric digital holographic microscope design

Digital holographic microscopy (DHM) has become an attractive imaging tool for the analysis of living cells and histological tissues. Telecentric DHM (TDHM) is a configuration of DHM that reduces the computational demands through a priori aberration corrections. However, TDHM requires a well-aligned optical pipeline to optimize its resolution and image quality (IQ), which has traditionally complicated the alignment process. Derived from optical interference functions, we offer here a set of methodologies to simplify TDHM design and alignment by determining the optimal +1-order position, which depends on the object-reference beam angle and the interference plane rotation angle. The methods are then experimentally tested and verified on a TDHM system by imaging living HeLa cells in suspension.

2π ambiguity-free digital holography method for stepped phase imaging

It is known that phase ambiguity is always an inherent problem in digital holography. In this paper, a 2π ambiguity-free digital holography method is proposed. The method naturally avoids phase ambiguity by a quasianalytic method. This quasianalytic method accurately calculates the true phase by constructing an equation and solving the solution of the equation. Thus, the inherent wrapping problem in digital holography is eliminated. For example, our experimental result shows that the true phase of the stepped specimen with the phase distributed in [0, 16π] can be obtained unambiguously. Since the proposed method naturally avoids the phase ambiguity problem, it may be beneficial to enlarge the application potential of the digital holography. The effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed method are verified by both numerical simulations and experimental results.

Single-shot wavelength-multiplexing for off-axis digital holography with a spectral filter

We present a single-shot wavelength-multiplexing technique for off-axis digital holography based on a spectral filter. Only a spectral filter is inserted between beam splitter and mirror in reflection off-axis digital holography (RODH). The spectral filter can transmit a well-defined wavelength band of light, while reject other unwanted radiation. By adjusting the filter and mirror separately, the propagation orientation of different reference beams of two wavelengths can be separated, and thus two off- axis holograms with different fringe directions are simultaneously captured by a monochrome camera. The wavefront interference analysis of using a spectral filter is discussed in detail. Our scheme is available for real-time wavelength-multiplexing but requires fewer optical elements and system modifications. Numerical simulation and experiment results of different types of spectral filters demonstrate the validity of proposed method.

Enlarged range of measurement method with strong noise resistance for dual-wavelength digital holography

A concise and powerful method for dual-wavelength digital holography (DWDH) is proposed. By designing a new algorithm, this proposed method bypasses the phase synthesis process and directly obtains the thickness distribution of the object. This method can enlarge the range of measurement with strong noise resistance. For example, noise analysis results show that the proposed method reduces the reconstruction error from 101 nm to 9 nm when the signal-to-noise ratio is equal to 30. Therefore, this method would prove useful for DWDH, and its effectiveness is verified by both numerical simulations and experimental results.

Real-time quantitative phase imaging by single-shot dual-wavelength off-axis digital holographic microscopy

A single-shot dual-wavelength digital holographic microscopy with an adjustable off-axis configuration is presented, which helps realize real-time quantitative phase imaging for living cells. With this configuration, two sets of interference fringes corresponding to their wavelengths can be flexibly recorded onto one hologram in one shot. The universal expression on the dual-wavelength hologram recorded under any wave vector orientation angles of reference beams is given. To avoid as much as possible the effect of zero-order spectrum, we can flexibly select their carry frequencies for the two wavelengths using this adjustable off-axis configuration, according to the distribution feature of object's spatial-frequency spectrum. This merit is verified by a quantitative phase imaging experiment for the microchannel of a microfluidic chip. The reconstructed phase maps of living onion epidermal cells exhibit cellular internal life activities, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, vividly displaying the progress of the nucleus, cell wall, cytoskeleton, and the substance transport in microtubules inside living cells. These imaging results demonstrate the availability and reliability of the presented method for real-time quantitative phase imaging.

Single-shot common-path off-axis dual-wavelength digital holographic microscopy

A single-shot common-path off-axis self-interference dual-wavelength digital holographic microscopic (DHM) system based on a cube beam splitter is demonstrated to expand the phase range in a stepped microstructure and for simultaneous measurement of the refractive index and physical thickness of a specimen. In the system, two laser beams with wavelengths of 532 nm and 632.8 nm are used. These laser beams are combined to transilluminate the object under study, then the object beam is divided into two beams by using a beam splitter oriented in such a way that both the beams propagate in almost the same direction, with an appropriate lateral separation between them. One of the object beams is spatially filtered at its Fourier plane, using a pinhole to generate a reference spherical beam free from the object information. The reference beam interferes with the object beam to form a digital hologram at the faceplate of the image sensor. The phase information is extracted from a single recorded digital hologram using the phase aberration compensation method that is based on principal component analysis (PCA). Owing to the common-path configuration, the system shows high temporal phase stability and it is less vibration-sensitive compared to counterparts such as a Mach-Zehnder type DHM. The performance of the dual-wavelength DHM system is verified in two different application fields by conducting the experiments using microsphere beads and living plant cells.

Optimal modified lateral shearing interferometer with axial range extension by using a dual optical plate

We present a method to extend the axial range of digital holographic microscopy based on the optimal modified lateral shearing interferometer (MLSI). The proposed system can extend the axial range by using a dual optical plate. The interference pattern with two spatial wavelengths is generated by the plate with different thicknesses. These spatial wavelengths transfer a dual spatial frequency into the Fourier plane by using FFT. Two phases are extracted by a dual spatial frequency and combined to create a synthetic wavelength, which is applied to measure the micrometer-scale object without phase unwrapping. Also, the noise-reducing algorithm is used to reduce phase noise caused by the amplified noise of the synthetic wavelength. The experimental result confirms the feasibility of the optimal MLSI by using a dual optical plate.

Quantitative phase imaging by wide-field interferometry with variable shearing distance uncoupled from the off-axis angle

We introduce a new shearing interferometry module for digital holographic microscopy, in which the off-axis angle, which defines the interference fringe frequency, is not coupled to the shearing distance, as is the case in most shearing interferometers. Thus, it enables the selection of shearing distance based on the spatial density of the sample, without losing spatial frequency content due to overlapping of the complex wave fronts in the spatial frequency domain. Our module is based on a 4f imaging unit and a diffraction grating, in which the hologram is generated from two mutually coherent, partially overlapping sample beams, with adjustable shearing distance, as defined by the position of the grating, but with a constant off-axis angle, as defined by the grating period. The module is simple, easy to align, and presents a nearly common-path geometry. By placing this module as an add-on unit at the exit port of an inverted microscope, quantitative phase imaging can easily be performed. The system is characterized by a 2.5 nm temporal stability and a 3.4 nm spatial stability, without using anti-vibration techniques. We provide quantitative phase imaging experiments of silica beads with different shearing distances, red blood cell fluctuations, and cancer cells flowing in a micro-channel, which demonstrate the capability and versatility of our approach in different imaging scenarios.

Phase unwrapping in dual-wavelength digital holographic microscopy with total variation regularization

A two-step dual-wavelength phase imaging method with total variation (TV) regularization in digital holographic microscopy (DHM) is presented. The rough height map is first denoised with TV regularization, and then it is used as a guiding map for accurate phase unwrapping. By combining the principle of dual-wavelength interferometry and TV regularization, the problem of phase unwrapping is converted into a minimization problem that can be efficiently solved with the Split Bregman algorithm. The proposed algorithm allows a synthetic wavelength that can be arbitrarily large in principle to a single wavelength, while the accuracy of the phase map can achieve the same level in single-wavelength DHM. Moreover, the unwrapping method is robust to the change of weighting parameters. Comparative topographic measurements of a sample with abrupt steps are illustrated, and the results verified the effectiveness of the method.