Quantitative analysis of numerically focused red blood cells using subdivided two-beam interference (STBI) based lateral-shearing digital holographic microscope

TL;DR

This paper presents a lateral-shearing digital holographic microscope that quantitatively analyzes red blood cell morphology and dynamics, providing 3D profile and depth information through a novel interferometric setup.

Contribution

It introduces a subdivided two-beam interference method integrated with a lateral shear interferometer for enhanced 3D imaging of red blood cells.

Findings

Enables quantitative 3D profiling of red blood cells.

Improves resolution by increasing back surface reflectivity.

Effectively filters duplicate images without losing fringe contrast.

Abstract

A lateral shear interferometer based digital holographic microscopy has been realized to study the morphology dynamics of Human red blood cells quantitatively. Here, a lateral shear interferometer is embedded with a conventional microscope with a CMOS sensor to form a lateral-shearing digital holographic microscope. It enables recording of image plane holograms of objects that can be numerically reconstructed to estimate its3-D prole. This yields the depth information of the sample in addition to its bright field image. The problem of the duplicate image is addressed by filtering object information from one of the beams, without losing the contrast in the fringes. The contrast in the fringes is maintained by increased reflectivity of the back surface of the shear plate. This improves the resolution in the proposed system.