Reconstruction of high-resolution holographic microscopic images

In in-line holographic microscopy a pinhole illuminates an object and a CCD-detector directly records the hologram in a pixel-pitch-dependent distance. A rapidly calculating exact reconstruction technique using a reorganized hologram with a low number of pixels, the the superposition technique, is presented. The algorithm is applied on imaging of a 2 mu m bead cluster, and it is compared with other reconstruction techniques. The high-contrast image corresponds to an NA of 0.7. A full 4 megapixel reconstruction with a resolution approaching the diffraction limit is possible in less than a minute. The technique is a base for high-resolution wide-field imaging by multispot illumination. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America