In this work we propose an open-top like common-path intrinsically achromatic optical diffraction tomography system. It operates as a total-shear interferometer and employs Ronchi-type amplitude diffraction grating, positioned in between the camera and the tube lens without an additional 4f system, generating three-beam interferograms with achromatic second harmonic. Such configuration makes the proposed system low cost, compact and immune to vibrations. We present the results of the measurements of 3D-printed cell phantom using laser diode (coherent) and superluminescent diode (partially coherent) light sources. Broadband light sources can be naturally employed without the need for any cumbersome compensation because of the intrinsic achromaticity of the interferometric recording (holograms generated by –1^st and +1^st conjugated diffraction orders are not affected by the illumination wavelength). The results show that the decreased coherence offers much reduced coherent noise and higher fidelity tomographic reconstruction especially when applied nonnegativity constraint regularization procedure.

We propose a speed-up method for the in-focus plane detection in digital holographic microscopy that can be applied to a broad class of autofocusing algorithms that involve repetitive propagation of an object wave to various axial locations to decide the in-focus position. The classical autofocusing algorithms apply a uniform search strategy, i.e., they probe multiple, uniformly distributed axial locations, which leads to heavy computational overhead. Our method substantially reduces the computational load, without sacrificing the accuracy, by skillfully selecting the next location to investigate, which results in a decreased total number of probed propagation distances. This is achieved by applying the golden selection search with parabolic interpolation, which is the gold standard for tackling single-variable optimization problems. The proposed approach is successfully applied to three diverse autofocusing cases, providing up to 136-fold speed-up.

We develop a time-efficient computation scheme for a holographic tomography reconstruction technique that accounts for multiple scattering by applying the forward model based on the wave propagation method (WPM). The computational efficiency is achieved by employing adjoint equations for calculation of the gradient of the data fidelity term in the gradient descent optimization procedure. In the paper we provide a general computation scheme that is suitable for various forward models that can be represented in the form of an iterative equation. Next, we provide the complete solution for the time-efficient reconstruction utilizing WPM. In the considered reconstruction case, the proposed algorithm enables the 114-fold speed-up of computations with respect to the original tomographic method.

Optimization-based phase retrieval method for digital lensless holographic microscopy in the double-plane recording configuration is proposed. In our method the phase retrieval is framed as an optimization problem that can be efficiently and rigorously tackled with gradient decent tools. This is done with the conjugate gradient method that possesses excellent theoretical features such as global and fast convergence (compared to steepest descent) and relatively low computational cost (compared to second order optimizers). The proposed method is extensively tested with simulations and experimental measurements that show superiority of our method over the Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm, especially in terms of reconstruction of problematic low frequency components of viable phase information.

Optical diffraction tomography enables label-free, 3D refractive index (RI) imaging of biological samples. We present a novel, cost-effective approach to ODT that employs a modular design incorporating a self-reference holographic capture module. This two-part system consists of an illumination module and a capture module that can be seamlessly integrated with any life-science microscope using an automated alignment protocol. The illumination module employs a galvo-scanner system, providing precise control over the angular illumination, while the capture module utilises the principle of self-reference off-axis holography. The design has a compact form factor, simple alignment, and reduced cost. Furthermore, our system offers the capability to switch between two imaging modalities, ODT and real-time synthetic aperture digital holographic microscopy (SA-DHM), a unique feature not found in other setups. Experimental results are provided using a kidney cancer cell line. Experimental results are provided using a kidney cancer cell line.