System calibration of diffraction tomography with integrated aberration and illumination position correction

Area of Science:

• Biomedical imaging
• Optical physics
• Quantitative phase imaging

Background:

• Multi-slice beam propagation (MSBP) is used for label-free refractive index (RI) reconstruction.
• MSBP accuracy degrades with optical aberrations and illumination deviations in live-cell imaging.
• Existing methods struggle with systematic errors in 3D reconstruction.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an adaptive calibration framework for diffraction tomography (AC-DT).
• To improve the accuracy and robustness of RI reconstruction in live-cell imaging.
• To address limitations of MSBP in the presence of aberrations and illumination errors.

Main Methods:

• Proposed adaptive calibration for diffraction tomography (AC-DT) based on the MSBP model.
• Utilized multi-angle intensity images for aberration and illumination deviation correction.
• Validated through simulations and biological experiments on unlabeled samples.

Main Results:

• AC-DT effectively corrects optical aberrations and illumination angle deviations.
• Demonstrated suppression of error propagation and artifact amplification in 3D reconstruction.
• Achieved accurate 3D RI distribution reconstruction for live cells.

Conclusions:

• AC-DT provides a robust solution for high-resolution, label-free live-cell imaging.
• The adaptive calibration technique is applicable to multiple-scattering scenarios.
• AC-DT enhances the reliability of MSBP-based quantitative RI reconstruction.