Phase manipulating Fresnel lenses for wide-field quantitative phase imaging.

Area of Science:

• Optical Engineering
• Microscopy
• Image Processing

Background:

• High-magnification imaging systems often face limitations in the optical field of view (FOV) due to a mismatch in space-bandwidth product (SBP) between objective lenses and digital cameras.
• This SBP mismatch restricts the amount of information captured, sacrificing the overall FOV in quantitative phase imaging (QPI).

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a novel framework using phase manipulating Fresnel lenses (PMFL) to bridge the SBP gap in QPI.
• To enable wide-field quantitative phase imaging by overcoming conventional design limitations.

Main Methods:

• Developed a framework based on phase manipulating Fresnel lenses (PMFL) for direct phase transformation of the optical field.
• Implemented wide-field QPI using a single dynamic PMFL mask to perform differential interference and scan the optical FOV.
• Constructed a microscopic platform equipped with the PMFL module for imaging various samples.

Main Results:

• The PMFL framework successfully bridges the SBP gap between optical components and digital sensors.
• Demonstrated significant expansion of the FOV for a given camera, achieving factors of 3x3, 2x2, and 4x1.
• Successfully imaged both natural and artificial samples using the developed microscopic platform.

Conclusions:

• The PMFL framework offers a breakthrough in QPI by simplifying the system to a direct phase transform.
• This approach overcomes the limitations of traditional interferometric QPI setups.
• The developed technology enables significantly wider field of view imaging in microscopy applications.