Phase microscope imaging in phase space

Abstract

Imaging in a bright field or phase contrast microscope is partially coherent. We have found that the image can be conveniently considered and modeled in terms of the Wigner distribution function (WDF) of the object transmission. The WDF of the object has a simple physical interpretation for the case of a slowly varying object. Basically, the image intensity is the spatial marginal of the spatial convolution of the object WDF with the phase space imager kernel (PSIkernel), a rotated version of the transmission cross-coefficient. The PSI-kernel can be regarded as a partially-coherent generalization of the point spread function. This approach can be extended to consider the partial coherence of the image itself. In particular, we can consider the mutual intensity, WDF or ambiguity function of the image. It is important to note that the spatial convolution of the object WDF with the PSI-kernel is not a WDF, and not the WDF of the image. The phase space representations of the image have relevance to phase reconstruction methods such as phase space tomography, or the transport of intensity equation approach, and to the three-dimensional image properties.