Cone-shaped optical fiber tip for cost-effective digital lensless holographic microscopy

In this work, the development and application of a cost-effective and robust digital lensless holographic microscopy (DLHM) system is presented. In the simple architecture of DLHM based on a point source and a digital camera, the production of the former is introduced by means of an engineered step-index optical fiber with a cone-shaped end tip. The conventional and regularly expensive point source in DLHM is produced by means of a high-numerical-aperture microscope objective and a metallic wavelength-sized pinhole. The proposed replacement renders to DLHM additional simplicity of building, in addition to mechanical stability and robustness, and further reduces the cost of the microscope. The simplified cost-effective DLHM architecture is utilized for imaging resolution test targets and samples of human blood and pond water, revealing competitive mechanical stability and trustable phase images of the imaged specimens.