Off-axis Holograms Research Articles

Fast compression of computer-generated holographic images based on a GPU-accelerated skip-dimension vector quantization method

A method for fast and low bit-rate compression of digital holograms based on a new vector quantization (VQ) method known as the skip-dimension VQ (SDVQ) is proposed. Briefly, a complex hologram is converted into a real off-axis hologram, and partitioned into a set of image vectors. The image vectors are passed into a graphic processing unit (GPU), and compressed through SDVQ into a set of code indices considerably smaller in data size than the source hologram. Experimental evaluation reveals that our scheme is capable of compressing a digital hologram to a compression ratio of over 500 times, in approximately 20-22 ms.

Accelerated autofocusing of off-axis holograms using critical sampling

In this Letter we propose a fast off-axis hologram autofocusing (AF) approach that is based on the redundant data elimination by the critical resampling of the contained complex field. Implementation of the proposed methodology enables the real-time AF with up to 12× speed-up factors in comparison to the classical approach. The method is further extended for single-shot physical autofocus of the fluorescence imaging channel of multimodal imaging instruments capable of off-axis hologram acquisition.

Analysis and adaptation of convolution algorithms to reconstruct extended objects in digital holography

This paper discusses convolution algorithms to reconstruct off-axis digital holograms. The problem of convolution is addressed by considering the spatial spectral properties of digital holograms, especially the unusual localization property of the Fourier spectrum of the hologram, in regard to the physical object space. After deriving the sampling requirements for the transfer functions, three approaches are considered with the concept of spatial bandwidth extension: zero padding, spectrum scanning, and adjustable magnification. The theoretical discussion is completed by experimental illustrations that enable the algorithms to be objectively compared.

Optimum aberration coefficients for recording high-resolution off-axis holograms in a Cs-corrected TEM

Amongst the impressive improvements in high-resolution electron microscopy, the Cs-corrector also has significantly enhanced the capabilities of off-axis electron holography. Recently, it has been shown that the signal above noise in the reconstructable phase can be significantly improved by combining holography and hardware aberration correction. Additionally, with a spherical aberration close to zero, the traditional optimum focus for recording high-resolution holograms ("Lichte's defocus") has become less stringent and both, defocus and spherical aberration, can be selected freely within a certain range. This new degree of freedom can be used to improve the signal resolution in the holographically reconstructed object wave locally, e.g. at the atomic positions. A brute force simulation study for an aberration corrected 200 kV TEM is performed to determine optimum values for defocus and spherical aberration for best possible signal to noise in the reconstructed atomic phase signals. Compared to the optimum aberrations for conventional phase contrast imaging (NCSI), which produce "bright atoms" in the image intensity, the resulting optimum values of defocus and spherical aberration for off-axis holography enable "black atom contrast" in the hologram. However, they can significantly enhance the local signal resolution at the atomic positions. At the same time, the benefits of hardware aberration correction for high-resolution off-axis holography are preserved. It turns out that the optimum is depending on the object and its thickness and therefore not universal.

Statistical Analysis of 3D Volume of Red Blood Cells with Different Shapes via Digital Holographic Microscopy

In this paper, we present a method to automatically quantify the three-dimensional (3D) volume of red blood cells (RBCs) using off-axis digital holographic microscopy. The RBCs digital holograms are recorded via a CCD camera using an off-axis interferometry setup. The RBCs' phase image is reconstructed from the recorded off-axis digital hologram by a computational reconstruction algorithm. The watershed segmentation algorithm is applied to the reconstructed phase image to remove background parts and obtain clear targets in the phase image with many single RBCs. After segmenting the reconstructed RBCs' phase image, all single RBCs are extracted, and the 3D volume of each single RBC is then measured with the surface area and the phase values of the corresponding RBC. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method to automatically calculate the 3D volume of RBC, two typical shapes of RBCs, i.e., stomatocyte/discocyte, are tested via experiments. Statistical distributions of 3D volume for each class of RBC are generated by using our algorithm. Statistical hypothesis testing is conducted to investigate the difference between the statistical distributions for the two typical shapes of RBCs. Our experimental results illustrate that our study opens the possibility of automated quantitative analysis of 3D volume in various types of RBCs.

Vertical-bandwidth-limited digital holography

Optical scanning holography (OSH) is a promising technique to acquire a big-size digital hologram. However, the acquisition speed is limited by the mechanical scanner. In this Letter we apply the OSH in conjunction with an anisotropic low-pass filtering pupil to acquire vertical-bandwidth-limited (VBL) holograms. The size and the acquisition time of the VBL hologram can be reduced by one order of magnitude while the horizontal resolution remains the same as the conventional scanning hologram. The VBL hologram can be coded as an off-axis hologram without any postfiltering. Meanwhile, the full horizontal bandwidth of the displaying device can be capitalized.

Off-axis digital hologram reconstruction: some practical considerations

Holographic rendering of off-axis intensity digital holograms is discussed. A review of some of the main numerical processing methods, based either on the Fourier transform interpretation of the propagation integral or on its linear system counterpart, is reported. Less common methods such as adjustable magnification reconstruction schemes and Fresnelet decomposition are presented and applied to the digital treatment of off-axis holograms. The influence of experimental parameters on the classical hologram reconstruction methods is assessed, offering guidelines for optimal image rendering regarding the hologram recording conditions.

Field-portable reflection and transmission microscopy based on lensless holography

We demonstrate a lensfree dual-mode holographic microscope that can image specimens in both transmission and reflection geometries using in-line transmission and off-axis reflection holography, respectively. This field-portable dual-mode holographic microscope has a weight of ~200 g with dimensions of 15 x 5.5 x 5cm, where a laser source is powered by two batteries. Based on digital in-line holography, our transmission microscope achieves a sub-pixel lateral resolution of ≤2 µm over a wide field-of-view (FOV) of ~24 mm2 due to its unit fringe magnification geometry. Despite its simplicity and ease of operation, in-line transmission geometry is not suitable to image dense or connected objects such as tissue slides since the reference beam gets distorted causing severe aberrations in reconstruction of such objects. To mitigate this challenge, on the same cost-effective and field-portable assembly we built a lensless reflection mode microscope based on digital off-axis holography where a beam-splitter is used to interfere a tilted reference wave with the reflected light from the object surface, creating an off-axis hologram of the specimens on a CMOS sensor-chip. As a result of the reduced space-bandwidth product of the off-axis geometry compared to its in-line counterpart, the imaging FOV of our reflection mode is reduced to ~9 mm2, while still achieving a similar sub-pixel resolution of ≤2 µm. We tested the performance of this compact dual-mode microscopy unit by imaging a US-air force resolution test target, various micro-particles as well as a histopathology slide corresponding to skin tissue. Due to its compact, cost-effective, and lightweight design, this dual-mode lensless holographic microscope might especially be useful for field-use or for conducting microscopic analysis in resource-poor settings.

Noise in off-axis type holograms including reconstruction- and CCD camera parameters

Noise in off-axis type holograms including reconstruction- and CCD camera parameters

Precise Test Sieves Calibration Method Based on Off-axis Digital Holography

We describe, throughout a Mach-Zehnder interferometric configuration, a new test sieves calibration method based on off-axis digital holography. The experiment is conducted on a test sieve of square openings. The nominal sieve opening is 1.00 mm with maximum individual opening of 1.14 mm in size. The recorded off-axis hologram is numerically processed using Fresnel transforms to obtain an object wave (amplitude and phase). From the reconstructed phase, the average size of the illuminated openings has been measured precisely. The proposed method can provide a real time solution for calibrating test sieves very precisely and with moderate accuracy.

Continuous-wave terahertz digital holography by use of a pyroelectric array camera

Terahertz (THz) digital holography is realized based on a 2.52 THz far-IR gas laser and a commercial 124 × 124 pyroelectric array camera. Off-axis THz holograms are obtained by recording interference patterns between light passing through the sample and the reference wave. A numerical reconstruction process is performed to obtain the field distribution at the object surface. Different targets were imaged to test the system's imaging capability. Compared with THz focal plane images, the image quality of the reconstructed images are improved a lot. The results show that the system's imaging resolution can reach at least 0.4 mm. The system also has the potential for real-time imaging application. This study confirms that digital holography is a promising technique for real-time, high-resolution THz imaging, which has extensive application prospects.

Characterization and inspection of microlens array by single cube beam splitter microscopy

The application of a single cube beam splitter (SCBS) microscope to micro-optics characterization is presented. The SCBS in the optical path, with a small angle between the optical axis and its central semireflecting layer, not only gives off-axis digital holograms but also provides dual-channel imaging. It is a unique and easy way to perform uniformity inspection across the entire microlens array. Experimental results on physical spherical phase compensation, single lens characterization, dual-channel imaging, and uniformity inspection are provided to demonstrate the unique properties of SCBS microscopy.

Three-dimensional display of a horizontal-parallax-only hologram

We propose a three-dimensional (3D) holographic display by converting an optically recorded complex full-parallax (FP) hologram to an off-axis horizontal-parallax-only (HPO) hologram. First, we record the complex FP hologram of an object using optical scanning holography. We then convert the complex FP hologram to an off-axis HPO hologram through fringe-matched Gaussian low-pass filtering and with the introduction of an off-axis reference. Finally, we reconstruct the off-axis HPO hologram optically using an amplitude-only spatial light modulator. Until now, only computer-generated HPO holograms have been displayed optically. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a 3D display of an optically recorded HPO hologram.

Observation of Hole Accumulation in Ge/Si Core/Shell Nanowires Using off-Axis Electron Holography

Hole accumulation in Ge/Si core/shell nanowires (NWs) has been observed and quantified using off-axis electron holography and other electron microscopy techniques. The epitaxial [110]-oriented Ge/Si core/shell NWs were grown on Si (111) substrates by chemical vapor deposition through the vapor-liquid-solid growth mechanism. High-angle annular-dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy images and off-axis electron holograms were obtained from specific NWs. The excess phase shifts measured by electron holography across the NWs indicated the presence of holes inside the Ge cores. Calculations based on a simplified coaxial cylindrical model gave hole densities of (0.4 ± 0.2) /nm(3) in the core regions.

Quantization noise and its reduction in lensless Fourier digital holography

Digital holography is an imaging technique that enables recovery of topographic 3D information about an object under investigation. In digital holography, an interference pattern is recorded on a digital camera. Therefore, quantization of the recorded hologram is an integral part of the imaging process. We study the influence of quantization error in the recorded holograms on the fidelity of both the intensity and phase of the reconstructed image. We limit our analysis to the case of lensless Fourier off-axis digital holograms. We derive a theoretical model to predict the effect of quantization noise and we validate this model using experimental results. Based on this, we also show how the resultant noise in the reconstructed image, as well as the speckle that is inherent in digital holography, can be conveniently suppressed by standard speckle reduction techniques. We show that high-quality images can be obtained from binary holograms when speckle reduction is performed.

Secure Audio Forensic Marking using Off-axis Hologram

In this paper, secure audio forensic mark algorithm to trace the illegal distribution is proposed. The proposed algorithm uses off-axis hologram when make the forensic mark for embedding into the audio. Embedding and extracting is performed in the DWT domain, and the Arnold transform of the forensic mark is used for improving the security. The hologram generator makes the hologram of the Arnold transformed mark. Because of the characteristics of the off-axis hologram, the proposed algorithm can embed high capacity information and extract without the original signal.

Improvement of speckle noise suppression in digital holography by rotating linear polarization state

An improved polarization recording approach to reduce speckle noise in digital holography is proposed. Multiple off-axis holograms are obtained by rotating the linear polarization state of both illumination and reference wave simultaneously. By averaging the intensity fields, the speckle noise in the reconstructed images is well suppressed. Statistical evaluation of the experimental results shows the effectiveness and improvement of the proposed method.

Numerical Reconstruction of Hi-Resolution Microscopic Images for Lens-Less Holographic Microscopy

A new method numerically reconstructing ahigh-resolution microscopic image is developed for lens-less holographic microscopy. Acomplex-amplitude in-line hologram with a large numerical aperture (NA) is extracted from one off-axis hologram recorded with a CCD or CMOS camera by applied one-shot digital holography. The large hologram is divided into a number of small sections, and these sections are superimposed to generate a small complex-amplitude in-line hologram. Focus-free images with high resolving power and no distortion are numerically reconstructed from the generated small hologram using Fast-Fourier-Transforms (FFTs). A resolution higher than 1μm is obtained in the optical experiment, which can be improved up to the wave length. High-resolution microscopic images can also be observed for three-dimensional (3-D) objects with a large depth immersed in dielectric media by using the lens-less holographic microscopy.

Digital synthesis of multiple off-axis holograms with overlapping Fourier spectra

By applying tilted illumination on an object we record different sections of its Fourier spectrum in a row. We make use of an overlap between these sections to calculate their spatial frequency shift in sub-pixel accuracy by correlation methods. The global phase difference between the sections is corrected by subtracting the phase values of the overlapping areas and plotting them into a histogram. In this way the phase difference is measured with an accuracy of ± 0.10 π. Also the amplitude adjustment between different spectral sections is demonstrated. An experimental setup for synthetic aperture digital holography using tilted illumination is presented and a detailed description of the digital aperture synthesis is given. The method is applied to improve the resolution of a holographically recorded object.

Application of partially coherent light in live cell imaging with digital holographic microscopy

The main drawbacks of laser-based digital holographic microscopy (DHM) are coherent noise and disturbances due to parasitic reflections in the experimental setup. To overcome some of these problems, investigations on the performance of partially coherent light in DHM-based live cell imaging were carried out. First, the impact of different partially coherent light sources on the formation and the reconstruction of digital off-axis holograms was analyzed. Therefore, the achieved lateral resolution and the accuracy for the detection of optical path length changes were compared to results obtained with laser light. In additional experiments, we investigated if partial coherent light can be utilized in DHM for quantitative phase contrast imaging of living cells in incident light configuration by using light from specifically selected reflective sample interfaces. The obtained results show the applicability of partially coherent light in off-axis DHM and its use to for the reduction of disturbances due to coherence effects. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that quantitative DHM phase contrast imaging of phase objects can be performed with experimental arrangements in which an illumination of the sample in transmission due to geometric conditions is not possible.