Phase retrieval in arbitrarily shaped aperture with the transport-of-intensity equation

Abstract

Phase is not easy to detect directly as intensity, but sometimes it contains the really desired information. The transport-of-intensity equation (TIE) is a powerful tool to retrieve the phase from the intensity. However, by considering the boundary energy exchange and the whole energy conversation in the field of view, the current popular Fast Fourier transform (FFT) based TIE solver can only retrieve the phase under homogeneous Neumann boundary condition. For many applications, the boundary condition could be more complex and general. A novel TIE phase retrieval method is proposed to deal with an optical field under a general boundary condition. In this method, an arbitrarily-shape hard aperture is added in the optical field. In our method, the TIE is solved by using iterative discrete cosine transforms (DCT) method, which contains a phase compensation mechanism to improve the retrieval results. The proposed method is verified in simulation with an arbitrary phase, an arbitrarily-shaped aperture, and non-uniform intensity distribution. Experiment is also carried out to check its feasibility and the method proposed in this work is very easy and straightforward to use in a practical measurement as a flexible phase retrieval tool.