High-fidelity intensity diffraction tomography with a non-paraxial multiple-scattering model

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new non-paraxial multiple-scattering model for intensity diffraction tomography that improves 3D refractive index imaging of biological samples, especially at high illumination angles.

Contribution

The authors develop a split-step non-paraxial model and a unified, efficient reconstruction algorithm for high-fidelity 3D imaging in IDT, applicable to both sequential and multiplexed techniques.

Findings

Accurately reconstructs 3D RI of biological samples with high-angle illumination.

Outperforms paraxial models in multiple scattering scenarios.

Demonstrates effectiveness on cells and live organisms.

Abstract

We propose a novel intensity diffraction tomography (IDT) reconstruction algorithm based on the split-step non-paraxial (SSNP) model for recovering the 3D refractive index (RI) distribution of multiple-scattering biological samples. High-quality IDT reconstruction requires high-angle illumination to encode both low- and high- spatial frequency information of the 3D biological sample. We show that our SSNP model can more accurately compute multiple scattering from high-angle illumination compared to paraxial approximation-based multiple-scattering models. We apply this SSNP model to both sequential and multiplexed IDT techniques. We develop a unified reconstruction algorithm for both IDT modalities that is highly computationally efficient and is implemented by a modular automatic differentiation framework. We demonstrate the capability of our reconstruction algorithm on both weakly scattering buccal epithelial cells and strongly scattering live $\textit{C. elegans}$ worms and live $\textit{C. elegans}$ embryos.