Common-path diffraction optical tomography with a low-coherence illumination for reducing speckle noise

• Main Authors: Park, HyunJoo, Park, YongKeun, Shin, Seungwoo, Kim, Youngchan, Lee, KyeoReh, Kim, Kyoohyun, Kim, Young-Jin
• Other Authors: Popescu, Gabriel
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Mechanical engineering::Bio-mechatronics
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/79379; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/26293
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Common-path diffraction optical tomography (cDOT) is a non-invasive and label-free optical holographic technique for measuring both the three-dimensional refractive index (RI) tomograms and two-dimensional dynamic phase images of a sample. Due to common-path geometry, cDOT provides quantitative phase imaging with high phase sensitivity. However, the image quality of the cDOT suffers from speckle noise; the use of a monochromatic laser inevitably results in the formation of parasitic fringe patterns in measured quantitative phase images. Here, we present a technique to reduce speckle noise in the cDOT using a low-coherence illumination source. Utilizing a Ti-sapphire pulsed laser in the cDOT, we achieved the reduction of speckle noise in both the three-dimensional RI tomograms and two-dimensional dynamic phase images.