Optical ptychographic microscopy for quantitative anisotropic phase imaging

Ptychography has recently been adapted for the recovery of the complete Jones matrix of an anisotropic specimen, using a vectorial form of the Ptychographic Iterative Engine (vPIE) for a set of linearly polarized probes. Here we show that this method can be applied to the recovery of the in-plane components of the elastic strain tensor in a diametrically compressed disc. The advantages and disadvantages of vPIE for the recovery of strain information from ‘real-world’ samples is discussed as well as the potential for this approach to be applied to the characterization of the mechanical properties of optically transparent materials