Versatile reconstruction framework for diffraction tomography with intensity measurements and multiple scattering

Area of Science:

• Optics and Photonics
• Computational Imaging
• Materials Science

Background:

• Phase retrieval and refractive index estimation are crucial in optics.
• Holographic measurements traditionally require complex-valued data.
• Simplifying data acquisition in optical measurements is a practical challenge.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a unified framework for reconstructing refractive indices from intensity-only measurements.
• To leverage recent advances in phase retrieval and holographic analysis.
• To enable simplified optical measurement setups without compromising performance.

Main Methods:

• A versatile inverse problem formulation with sparsity constraints.
• Modularity to incorporate various forward models (linear/nonlinear) and regularizers.
• Reconstruction using beam-propagation or Lippmann-Schwinger models with total-variation regularization.

Main Results:

• Successful reconstruction of refractive indices from intensity-only data.
• Performance comparable to methods using complex holographic data.
• Demonstration of simplified acquisition setups.

Conclusions:

• The proposed intensity-only framework offers a practical alternative for refractive index reconstruction.
• This approach simplifies experimental setups by eliminating the need for phase information.
• The method achieves high performance, matching traditional complex data techniques.