Compensation of phase aberration by using a virtual confocal scheme in digital holographic microscopy

This work presents cost-effective, simple arbitrary phase-step digital holographic microscopy to suppress both zero-order and twin-image terms. A virtual confocal offset lens under in-line configuration is also used to compensate for the introduced quadratic phase by using a microscope objective lens. In addition to reducing the difficulties of physical confocal configurations, the proposed method significantly increases the magnification power, ultimately achieving the purposes of an optical zoom. An attempt is also made to reduce the noise interference of a high magnification system by developing a long focal lens to reduce light detection size, subsequently gaining an approximately plane wave light source to illuminate the object within the effective depth of focus. Experimental results indicate that the proposed high magnification system can be elevated with low noise interference, and image reconstruction without quadratic phase terms.