Guided progressive reconstructive imaging: a new quantization-based framework for low-dose, high-throughput and real-time analytical ptychography

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel quantization-based framework for real-time, low-dose ptychography that leverages detector advancements to enable high-throughput, immediate feedback, and broad applicability across imaging modalities.

Contribution

It presents a new guided progressive reconstructive imaging method that simplifies and accelerates ptychographic phase retrieval using a quantization approach and pre-calculated kernel libraries.

Findings

Achieves real-time reconstruction surpassing acquisition bandwidth.

Provides high dose-efficiency with simplified implementation.

Applicable to electron, X-ray, and optical imaging modalities.

Abstract

By profiting from recent developments in detector technologies, making it possible to access a stream of detection events with few-ns time resolutions, a new ptychographic workflow is established. This methodological framework, referred to as guided progressive reconstructive imaging, relies on a quantization-based description of the acquired intensity, through an elementary derivation. Established direct phase retrieval solutions, such as the Wigner distribution deconvolution approach, can then be adapted to a continuous treatment of received counts, with no need for a dense data representation. Consequently, the result is obtained in the form of a progressively improving estimate, while providing immediate user feedback thanks to a processing speed high enough to surpass the acquisition bandwidth. This fast measurement is enabled by the cumulative usage of a pre-calculated library of kernel-limited functions, accumulating count-wise contributions as a function of the triggered detector pixel. Hence, the reconstruction offers the same advantages of direct phase retrieval methods, in particular a high dose-efficiency and the absence of complex convergence dynamics, with much less stringent restrictions on the field of view than is typical in current alternatives. Its implementation is also significantly more straightforward and flexible. Overall, this work constitutes a major evolution in the state-of-the-art, facilitating repeatable and low-dose experiments with high accessibility, and being applicable to electron-based imaging, X-ray diffraction and optical microscopy.