GEOMScope: Large Field-of-view 3D Lensless Microscopy with Low Computational Complexity

TL;DR

GEOMScope is a lensless 3D microscopy system that achieves fast, high-resolution, large field-of-view imaging with low computational complexity, suitable for real-time biomedical applications.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel geometrical-optics-based reconstruction algorithm enabling local, fast 3D imaging in lensless microscopes with significantly reduced computational requirements.

Findings

Achieves near real-time 3D reconstruction over 23x23x5 mm^3 volume.

Provides 40 μm lateral and 300 μm axial resolution.

Reduces computational resources by enabling local reconstruction.

Abstract

Recent development of lensless imagers has enabled three-dimensional (3D) imaging through a thin piece of optics in close proximity to a camera sensor. A general challenge of wide-field lensless imaging is the high computational complexity and slow speed to reconstruct 3D objects through iterative optimization process. Here, we demonstrated GEOMScope, a lensless 3D microscope that forms image through a single layer of microlens array and reconstructs objects through a geometrical-optics-based pixel back projection algorithm and background suppressions. Compared to others, our method allows local reconstruction, which significantly reduces the required computation resource and increases the reconstruction speed by orders of magnitude. This enables near real-time object reconstructions across a large volume of 23x23x5 mm^3, with a lateral resolution of 40 um and axial resolution of 300 um. Our system opens new avenues for broad biomedical applications such as endoscopy, which requires both miniaturized device footprint and real-time high resolution visualization.