System model enabling fast tomographic phase microscopy with total variation regularisation.

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Imaging
• Optical Microscopy
• Cell Biology

Background:

• Tomographic phase microscopy (TPM) enables label-free 3D live cell imaging via refractive index mapping.
• Current TPM methods suffer from slow imaging speeds and anisotropic resolution, limiting their applications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a novel reconstruction framework to accelerate TPM imaging and enhance refractive index map quality.
• To address the limitations of slow imaging and anisotropic resolution in TPM.

Main Methods:

• Formulated a linear measurement model using a system matrix for TPM data.
• Proposed a reconstruction framework employing total variation norm regularization.
• Utilized an accelerated alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) for efficient computation.

Main Results:

• The proposed method significantly reduces the required angular illumination sampling frequency.
• Experimental results demonstrate improved imaging speed compared to conventional methods.
• Enhanced quality of reconstructed refractive index maps was observed in both phantom and real cell data.

Conclusions:

• The developed framework successfully accelerates TPM imaging by enabling sparse angular illumination collection.
• The method provides high-quality 3D refractive index maps, overcoming major TPM limitations.
• This advancement facilitates broader applications of TPM in live cell imaging and biological research.