Ptychography using Blind Multi-Mode PMACE

TL;DR

This paper introduces BM-PMACE, a novel blind ptychography method that jointly estimates complex images and multiple unknown probe functions, improving reconstruction quality and convergence in partially coherent light scenarios.

Contribution

We extend the PMACE framework to handle blind ptychography with multiple unknown probe modes, incorporating local estimates and dynamic probe mode integration.

Findings

Outperforms existing methods in reconstruction quality

Achieves faster convergence in synthetic and real data

Effectively estimates multiple unknown probe functions

Abstract

Ptychography is an imaging technique that enables nanometer-scale reconstruction of complex transmittance images by scanning objects with overlapping illumination patterns. However, the illumination function is typically unknown, which presents challenges for reconstruction, especially when using partially coherent light sources. In this paper, we introduce Blind Multi-Mode Projected Multi-Agent Consensus Equilibrium (BM-PMACE) for blind ptychographic reconstruction. We extend the PMACE framework for distributed inverse problems to jointly estimate the complex transmittance image and multiple, unknown, partially coherent probe functions. Importantly, our method maintains local probe estimates to exploit complementary information at multiple probe locations. Our method also incorporates a dynamic strategy for integrating additional probe modes. Through experimental simulations and validations using both synthetic and measured data, we demonstrate that BM-PMACE outperforms existing approaches in reconstruction quality and convergence rate.