This dissertation has mainly aimed at developing novel techniques, methodologies for measuring the optical field, specifically both the amplitude and phase distribution. Furthermore, we have attempted to extend their applications in the scope of optical imaging, including lensless/holographic imaging, quantitative phase imaging and the calibration for light-sheet microscopes.@en

We present a quantitative phase imaging microscope based on a Shack-Hartmann sensor, that directly reconstructs the optical path difference (OPD) in reflective mode. Comparing with the holographic or interferometric methods, the SH technique needs no reference beam in the setup, which simplifies the system. With a preregistered reference, the OPD image can be reconstructed from a single shot. Also, the method has a rather relaxed requirement on the illumination coherence, thus a cheap light source such as a LED is feasible in the setup. In our previous research, we have successfully verified that a conventional transmissive microscope can be transformed into an optical path difference microscope by using a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor under incoherent illumination. The key condition is that the numerical aperture of illumination should be smaller than the numerical aperture of imaging lens. This approach is also applicable to characterization of reflective and slightly scattering surfaces.@en

In this Letter, we show that a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor can be used for the quantitative measurement of the specimen optical path difference (OPD) in an ordinary incoherent optical microscope, if the spatial coherence of the illumination light in the plane of the specimen is larger than the microscope resolution. To satisfy this condition, the illumination numerical aperture should be smaller than the numerical aperture of the imaging lens. This principle has been successfully applied to build a high-resolution reference-free instrument for the characterization of the OPD of micro-optical components and microscopic biological samples.

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We present a reference-less and time-multiplexing phase retrieval method by making use of the digital micromirror device (DMD). In this method, the DMD functions not only as a flexible binary mask which modulates the optical field, but also as a sampling mask for measuring corresponding phases, which makes the whole setup simple and robust. The DMD reflection forms a sparse intensity mask in the pupil which produces speckle pattern after propagation. With the recorded intensity on the camera and the binary pattern on the DMD, the phase in all the ‘on’ pixels can be reconstructed at once by solving inverse problems with iterative methods, for instance using Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm. Then the phase of the whole pupil can be reconstructed from a series of binary patterns and speckle patterns. Numerical experiments show the feasibility of this phase retrieval method and the importance of sparse binary masks in the improving of convergence speed.@en

A high-resolution Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor has been used for coherent holographic imaging, by computer reconstruction and propagation of the complex field in a lensless imaging setup. The resolution of the images obtained with the experimental data is in a good agreement with the diffraction theory. Although a proper calibration with a reference beam improves the image quality, the method has a potential for reference-less holographic imaging with spatially coherent monochromatic and narrowband polychromatic sources in microscopy and imaging through turbulence.@en

We have experimentally demonstrated a lensless coherent microscope based on direct registration of the complex optical field by sampling the pupil with a sequence of two-point interferometers formed by a digital micromirror device. Complete registration of the complex amplitude in the pupil of the imaging system, without any reference beam, provides a convenient link between the experimental and computational optics. Unlike other approaches to digital holography, our method does not require any external reference beam, resulting in a simple and robust registration setup. Computer analysis of the experimentally registered field allows for focusing the image in the whole range from zero to infinity, and for virtual correction of the aberrations present in the real optical system, by applying the adaptive wavefront corrections to its virtual model.@en

We investigate the possibility of interferometric optical field sensor with DMD forming a series of sampling interferometers in the pupil of an optical system. Our preliminary experiment validates the feasibility of our approach for the field reconstruction in the case of coherent field. We believe that this approach can be extended to sensing of speckle patterns and even incoherent fields, by analyzing not only the intensity and phase, but also the amplitude and the visibility of the interference patterns. Such analysis would yield the complete complex amplitude and/or coherence function, making the approach directly applicable to a wide range of inverse source problems in optics.@en