Self interference digital holographic microscopy approach for inspection of technical and biological phase specimens

Quantitative holographic phase contrast imaging enables high-resolution inspection of reflective surfaces and technical phase specimen as well as the minimally invasive analysis of living cells. However, a drawback of many experimental arrangements is the requirement for a separate reference wave which results in a phase stability decrease and the demand for a precise adjustment of the intensity ratio between object and reference wave. Thus, a self interference digital holographic microscopy (DHM) approach was explored which only requires a single object illumination wave. Due to the Michelson interferometer design of the proposed setup two wave fronts with an almost identical curvature are superimposed. This results in a nearly ideal pattern of spatial off-axis carrier fringes and a constant interferogram contrast in the hologram plane. Moreover, the hologram evaluation with spatial phase shifting reconstruction algorithms and Fourier transformation-based spatial filtering methods as well as the integration of DHM in common research microscopes is simplified. Furthermore, the use of laser light sources with a short coherence length is enabled. The applicability of the proposed self interference principle is illustrated by data from the analysis of technical and biological phase specimens. The obtained results demonstrate that the method prospects to be a versatile tool for quantitative phase contrast imaging.