Single capture bright field and off-axis digital holographic microscopy.

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Optics
• Microscopy Techniques
• Cellular Imaging

Background:

• Quantitative Phase Imaging (QPI) offers label-free contrast for transparent specimens.
• Bright Field (BF) microscopy provides complementary structural information.
• Simultaneous acquisition of BF and QPI is challenging but beneficial for biological studies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a single-capture multimodal imaging approach.
• To integrate laser-based QPI with conventional BF microscopy.
• To demonstrate label-free imaging of living cells using this dual-mode system.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of common-path digital holographic microscopy (DHM) in parallel with BF imaging.
• Spatially multiplexed recording of white light images and digital off-axis holograms.
• Numerical demultiplexing of recorded data for separate BF and QPI reconstruction.

Main Results:

• Successful demonstration of simultaneous BF and QPI using a single optical setup.
• Validation of the multimodal concept through imaging of microspheres.
• Label-free dual-mode imaging of living pancreatic tumor cells achieved.

Conclusions:

• The proposed single-capture approach effectively combines BF and QPI.
• This method provides a powerful tool for label-free, multimodal imaging of live biological samples.
• The technique has potential applications in cell biology and disease research.