Computational Wide Area Optical Phase Contrast Microscopy*

This work focuses on computational imaging techniques aimed at reducing the cumbersomeness and cost of physical optical components. Here we present our preliminary results from a lens free wide area optical microscope. A wide area on-chip microscopy would allow faster and more efficient microscopy of sparse thin samples without the need to scan the sample. Our setup resembles that used in a Gabor Holographic method. The goal of this project is to investigate the effectiveness of a single-stage algorithm to obtain the phase of an image from intensity measurements alone. The technique will include both single and multiple source-to-sample distances in order to generate data to explore previously-established methodologies. We will adapt some popular methods used in x-ray phase retrieval to test our new device. In addition, we will develop theoretical methods and computational algorithms to suit an array of applications.