Single-shot interference microscopy using a wedged glass plate for quantitative phase imaging of biological cells

To achieve quantitative phase imaging of biological cells, a new and simple single-shot interference microscopy is demonstrated by using a single rectangular wedged glass plate. This method is very compact, portable, and easy to implement. For this proposed interference microscopy, the wedged glass plate is used to deflect one half of the collimated incident beam toward another half. Subsequently, the two halves encounter and generate off-axis interference. Furthermore, based on the above system configuration, we also demonstrate dual channels interference successfully. For this situation, a common non-polarization cube beam-splitter is tilted and inset in front of the wedged glass plate. When the sample is only irradiated by one half of the incident beam while the incident beam is only incident to one side of the center semi-reflecting layer of the cube beam-splitter, two interference channels with a relative pi (rad) phase-shift in one interferogram can be produced simultaneously. Using the proposed method, the phase information of the biological cell (unicellular paramecium) is obtained successfully. The experimental results show that our proposed method is practical and promising.