Single-shot phase imaging with a coded aperture

We present a method of quantitatively acquiring a large complex field, containing not only amplitude information but also phase information, based on single-shot phase imaging with a coded aperture ( SPICA). In SPICA, the propagating field from an object illuminated by partially coherent visible light is sieved by a coded mask, and the sieved field propagates to an image sensor, where it is captured. The sieved field is recovered from the single captured intensity image via a phase retrieval algorithm with an amplitude support constraint using the mask pattern, and then the object's complex field is reconstructed from the recovered sieved field by an algorithm employing a sparsity constraint based on compressive sensing. The system model and the theoretical bounds of SPICA are derived. We also verified the concept with numerical demonstrations. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America