Non-interferometric calibration of the phase transmission matrix in lensless endoscopy (Conference Presentation)

Multicore fiber bundles are attractive candidates for lensless endscopes because of their ruggedness and the relative simplicity involved in their calibration and operation. Nevertheless, the measurement of the transmission matrix of the MCF is still an interferometric process, typically requiring high stability and possibly sequential measurements. A key challenge is to replace this with a much simpler and robust technique – phase retrieval. In this talk, we will examine the major challenge in using phase retrieval in conventional MCFs. This is related to the discrete and periodic nature of the auto-correlation of an ordered MCF, resulting in the stagnation of phase retrieval algorithms in one of a multitude of local minimums. We employ phase diversity, i.e. more the one complex illumination pattern with a known phase profile can help overcome this issue. In particular, we identify that spiral phase patterns are well-suited due to their generation of complementary speckle patterns, resulting in highly non-redundant information. We experimentally demonstrate that three intensity images are sufficient to retrieve the transmission matrix with very high accuracy and success rates. Furthermore, we will also present a novel disordered MCF, which facilitates phase retrieval with a single intensity image and a priori knowledge of the core positions. This is a simple and rapidly converging method which relies on the aperiodic arrangement and the sparsity of the cores. Both these computationally inexpensive techniques highlight the potential of phase retrieval as a tool for robust phase calibration of fiber bundles in lensless imaging.