Interference probe ptychography for computational amplitude and phase microscopy

We have developed an approach to Fresnel domain ptychography in which the illumination consists of an interference pattern. This pattern is conveniently created by overlapping two coherent beams at an angle. Only the phase and orientation of the interferometric fringe pattern needs to be scanned to reconstruct a high-fidelity object image, which alleviates the requirements for accurate sample positioning and system stability. As such, the resulting imaging systems can be constructed in an extremely simple and robust way. Object images are reconstructed from recorded Fresnel diffraction data using a modified ptychographical iterative engine. We demonstrate the capabilities of this imaging system by recording images of various biological samples, demonstrating quantitative phase contrast as well as a spatial resolution better than 2.2 μm.