High resolution portable holocamera

The design, construction, and testing of a portable hologram microscope are described. The instrument is based on a small, reliable, pulsed ruby laser to avoid the degrading effects of vibration; the instrument weighs 7.9 kg and measures 30.5 cm x 33 cm x 15.5 cm. A magnifying relay lens is used in a design such that resolution is limited by the effects of speckle. These effects can be reduced by incoherent superposition of images from the four independent holograms of each object that are automatically recorded. Resolution is 3-4 microm, field of view is 4.5 mm, and depth of field is 4 mm. Results of measurements on resolution, image quality, image intensity fluctuations, and image signal-to-noise ratio are presented.