Quantitative imaging for optical field via a single-pixel detector

Quantitative phase imaging (QPI) is important in many applications such as microscopy and crystallography. To quantitatively reveal phase information, people could either employ interferometric pictures for phase shift calculation, or utilize diffraction patterns for phase retrieval reconstruction. Traditionally, both of these two ways use pixelated detectors. In this work, a novel QPI scheme is designed inspired by single-pixel camera (SPC), which retrieves images using structured illumination and single-pixel signals. We use partial coherent light with phase modulation for illumination, and a point detector to detect the zero-order diffraction spectrum of the object. Based on the illumination structures and point signals, a complex value image is reconstructed using a truncated amplitude flow phase retrieval algorithm. This approach is universal for various wavelengths, and needs no a priori information of the targets. Both simulation and experiment show that our single-pixel QPI scheme exhibits great performance even with objects in an extremely rough phase distribution. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

A novel QPI scheme inspired by single-pixel camera (SPC) is proposed in this work, utilizing structured illumination and single-pixel signals for image reconstruction without prior information of the targets. The scheme exhibits great performance even with objects in an extremely rough phase distribution in both simulation and experiment.