Decoupling of Cell Refractive Index and Thickness under Three-Wavelength Phase Imaging

Quantitative phase imaging (QPI) technology is one of the important techniques for nondestructive imaging of a cell’s morphology. In QPI, the decoupling of refractive index (RI) and thickness of a cell is a key problem. We aim at the multiple hypothesis constraints (MHC) shortcomings of the traditional method in the decoupling of multi-media and nonspherical cells. A method is proposed to decouple the RI and the thickness of a cell under three-wavelength phase imaging in this paper. In this method, the sample’s RI and thickness distributions can be obtained by solving three-wavelength phase equations using the approximate setting under dispersion based on the optical dispersion theories. In simulation experiments, the results show that the method can effectively decouple the RI and thickness for homogeneous and multi-media nonspherical cells and has high accuracy. Because the method in this paper is obtained by using few approximate assumptions and strict mathematical analysis, it can decouple the RI and thickness of nuclear cells with any shape, and moreover, it provides an important basis for the technological development of cell morphology analysis.