A Comparative Study on the Interference Microscopy Imaging and Diffraction Microscopy Imaging for Biological Cells

The studying standard of life sciences and clinical medicine is determined by the development level of morphology detection of biological cells. Currently, there are two approaches for revealing the 3D structure of biological cells, namly, interferometric technique and diffractive technique. Both methods could offer the phase information of the cell. Due to the translucent characteristics of cells and the wave nature of light based on cell scale, interference effect coexists with the diffraction effect when light passes through the cells. In this paper, models based on the shape of the typical blood cells are built and simulation experiments of interference as well as diffraction phase imaging are carried out with the models. Furthermore, the similarities and differences between them are discussed, with respect to the intensity distribution and phase distribution. The result agrees well with the experiments. It is suggested to be useful to promote the research of phase recovery methods of the two kinds of imaging technology. Keywords-Phase microscopy imaging; Biological cells; Interference; Diffraction; Comparative study. I. INTRODUCTION It is significant to identify the structure of cells in life sciences and clinical applications. Phase microscopy, especially quantitative phase microscopy plays an important role for the structure analysis of biological cells. But the phase information could not be obtained directly because of the limitations of the property of optical devices. Thus, the method of wavefront phase detection has become a hot issue, and wavefront sensing technologies based on interference and diffraction are widely used. In 1948, Gabor proposed the initial idea of holography