Single-Pixel Fluorescent Diffraction Tomography

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel optical diffraction tomography method that enables 3D imaging of fluorescent objects by encoding phase information through interferometric illumination, extending the technique to incoherent contrast mechanisms.

Contribution

It introduces a new approach that mimics coherent scattering using dual coherent beams to recover phase information from fluorescent emission.

Findings

Successfully encodes phase information in fluorescent emission.

Enables 3D imaging of incoherent fluorescent contrast.

Extends optical diffraction tomography to incoherent contrast mechanisms.

Abstract

Optical diffraction tomography is an indispensable tool for studying objects in three-dimensions due to its ability to accurately reconstruct scattering objects. Until now this technique has been limited to coherent light because spatial phase information is required to solve the inverse scattering problem. We introduce a method that extends optical diffraction tomography to imaging spatially incoherent contrast mechanisms such as fluorescent emission. Our strategy mimics the coherent scattering process with two spatially coherent illumination beams. The interferometric illumination pattern encodes spatial phase in temporal variations of the fluorescent emission, thereby allowing incoherent fluorescent emission to mimic the behavior of coherent illumination. The temporal variations permit recovery of the propagation phase, and thus the spatial distribution of incoherent fluorescent emission can be recovered with an inverse scattering model.