Dual-view transport of intensity phase imaging devices for quantitative phase microscopy applications

Abstract

Because phase has significantly higher contrast than amplitude, particularly for label-free specimens, and provides a new perspective for morphology and shape testing, quantitative phase microscopy has become an effective means in optical imaging and testing. We designed dual-view transport of intensity phase imaging, which comprehensively considers real-time imaging, simple configuration, and fast phase retrieval. This technique employs two imaging recorders to simultaneously capture under- and over-focus images and recovers the quantitative phase distributions from these defocused images by solving the Poisson equation. Based on such an idea, we designed PhaseRMiC as a phase real-time microscopy camera and PhaseStation as a compact phase imaging work station, and they have been successfully used in live cell observation, whole-slide imaging, and flow cytometry for various purposes, such as specimen detection, counting, recognition, and differentiation. In this work, we first briefly introduce the principle of the dual-view transport of intensity phase imaging, next provide the details of our designed PhaseRMiC and PhaseStation, and finally demonstrate their applications in real-time, field of view scanning, and microfluidic imaging, respectively. Besides, we also compare PhaseRMiC and PhaseStation with other quantitative phase microscopy equipment and lay out their prospects for future applications. We believe our designed dual-view transport of intensity phase imaging as well as its derivatives, PhaseRMiC and PhaseStation, can be a promising choice for quantitative phase microscopy.