Pupil-aberration calibration with controlled illumination for quantitative phase imaging

Opt Express. 2021 Jul 5;29(14):22127-22135. doi: 10.1364/OE.426080.

Abstract

Quantitative phase imaging (QPI) exploits sample-induced changes in the optical field to analyze biological specimens in a label-free manner. However, the quantitative nature of QPI makes it susceptible to optical aberrations. We propose a method for calibrating pupil aberrations by imaging a sample of interest. The proposed method recovers pupil information by utilizing the cross-spectral density between optical fields at different incident angles and allows both thin and weakly scattering three-dimensional samples for calibration. We experimentally validate the proposed method by imaging various samples, including a resolution target, breast tissue, and a polystyrene bead, and demonstrate aberration-free two- and three-dimensional QPI.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Calibration / standards*
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Imaging, Three-Dimensional / methods*
  • Lighting
  • Microscopy / methods*
  • Pupil*