High resolution quantum enhanced phase imaging of cells

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a quantum-enhanced, high-resolution, label-free phase imaging technique for biological cells that surpasses shot-noise limits, enabling detailed cellular imaging with minimal photon doses and high speed.

Contribution

It introduces a novel quantum imaging method that achieves sub-shot-noise, high-resolution, wide-field phase imaging of cells without interferometry, overcoming previous resolution limitations.

Findings

Achieved sub-shot-noise phase imaging of biological cells.

Provided high-resolution, label-free cellular imaging.

Operates in a fast, stable, wide-field, quasi-single-shot mode.

Abstract

Recovering both amplitude and phase information from a system is a fundamental goal of optical imaging. At the same time, it is crucial to operate at low photon doses to avoid altering the sample, particularly in biological applications. Quantum imaging provides a powerful route to extract more information per photon than classical techniques, which are ultimately limited by shot-noise. However, the trade-off between quantum noise reduction and spatial resolution has long been regarded as a major obstacle to the application of quantum techniques to small cellular and sub-cellular structures, where they could offer the greatest benefits. Here, we overcome this limitation by demonstrating sub-shot-noise quantitative phase imaging of biological cells based on the transport-of-intensity equation, enabling high-fidelity, label-free imaging of key cellular and sub-cellular features. We achieve high-resolution phase imaging limited only by the numerical aperture, while simultaneously obtaining a resolution-independent quantum advantage. Unlike other quantum imaging approaches, our method operates in a quasi-single-shot, wide-field configuration, retrieves both phase and amplitude information, and does not rely on interferometric measurements, making it intrinsically fast and stable. These results pave the way for the immediate application of sub-shot-noise imaging in biological microscopy.