Quantitative phase imaging endoscopy with a metalens

Quantitative phase imaging (QPI) recovers the exact wavefront of light from intensity measurements. Topographical and optical density maps of translucent microscopic bodies can be extracted from these quantified phase shifts. We demonstrate quantitative phase imaging at the tip of a coherent fiber bundle using chromatic aberrations inherent in a silicon nitride hyperboloid metalens. Our method leverages spectral multiplexing to recover phase from multiple defocus planes in a single capture using a color camera. Our 0.5 mm aperture metalens shows robust quantitative phase imaging capability with a $$ field of view and 0. $$ phase resolution ( ~ 0. $$ in air) for experiments with an endoscopic fiber bundle. Since the spectral functionality is encoded directly in the imaging lens, the metalens acts both as a focusing element and a spectral filter. The use of a simple computational backend will enable real-time operation. Key limitations in the adoption of phase imaging methods for endoscopy such as multiple acquisition, interferometric alignment or mechanical scanning are completely mitigated in the reported metalens based QPI.