A novel random phase-shifting digital holographic microscopy method

This paper proposes a new method that reconstructs the information of specimen by using random phase shift step in digital holographic microscopy (DHM). The principles of the method are described and discussed in detail. In practical experiment, because the phase shifter is neither perfectly linear nor calibrated, digital holograms with inaccurate phase shift step are recorded by the charge-coupled device (CCD). The phase could be accurately reconstructed from the recorded digital holograms by using the random phase-shifting algorithm, which makes up for reconstructed phase error caused by ordinary phase-shifting algorithm. The phase aberration compensation is also discussed. In order to verify the flexibility of the proposed method, numerical simulation of random phase-shifting DHM was carried out. The simulation results illustrated that the presented method is effective when the phase shift step is unknown or random in DHM. Supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (“973” Project) (Grant No. 2004CB619304), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 10625209, 10472050, 10732080), the Project of Beijing Natural Sciences Foundation (Grant No. 3072007), the Program for New Century Excellent Talents (NCET) in Chinese University Ministry of Education (Grant No. NCET-05-0059), and the Opening Funds from the State Key Laboratory of Explosion Science and Technology