Improved depth resolution by single-exposure in-line compressive holography

A single-exposure in-line (SEOL) holography is a digital holographic setup that has been used in the study of cell identification. In this paper we demonstrate improved three-dimensional performance of the SEOL holography setup by applying the principles of the recently introduced compressive-sensing theory. This, along with proper modeling of the sensing process, enables improved depth-resolution features, especially when considering noisy environments. We then study and demonstrate that by using the proper reference and object-beam amplitude partition, the compressive SEOL holography setup is found to be almost ideal. This occurs since it allows the recovery of low-signal-to-noise-ratio objects and rapid acquisition rate associated with the off-axis holography setup, combined with the high resolution and field of view associated with the in-line holography setup. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America