Systems and methods for performing quantitative phase-contrast confocal microscopy
AssigneeUniversity of South Florida
InventorsChanggeng Liu, Myung K. Kim
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A system for performing quantitative phase-contrast confocal microscopy includes a light source that emits light, a first beam splitter that splits the emitted light into an illumination path and a hologram path, means provided along the illumination path for delivering a first part of the emitted light to an object as a collimated line, a light sensor that captures light reflected off of the object to obtain an intensity image for the collimated line, and means provided along the hologram path for delivering a second part of the emitted light to the light sensor at an off-axis angle to obtain an off-axis hologram for the collimated line.
Claims13
A system for performing quantitative phase-contrast confocal microscopy, the system comprising:
- a light source that emits light;
- a first beam splitter that splits the emitted light into an illumination path and a hologram path;
- means provided along the illumination path for delivering a first part of the emitted light to an object as a collimated line;
- a light sensor that captures light reflected off of the object to obtain an intensity image for the collimated line;
- and
- means provided along the hologram path for delivering a second part of the emitted light to the light sensor at an off-axis angle to obtain an off-axis hologram for the collimated line, wherein the means for delivering a second part of the emitted light comprises a second beam splitter that splits the light into a first path and a second path, the first path including a mirror that reflects the emitted light back to the second beam splitter, a beam expander that receives and collimates the reflected light, and an angled beam splitter that reflects the collimated light at an off-axis angle.
A system for performing quantitative phase-contrast confocal microscopy, the system comprising:
- a laser that emits light;
- a first beam splitter that splits the emitted light into two portions;
- an illumination path that receives a first portion of the emitted light, the illumination path including a beam expander that receives and collimates the emitted light, a cylindrical lens that receives the collimated light and focuses it onto a line, and an objective lens that focuses the collimated line onto an object;
- a hologram path that receives a second portion of the emitted light, the hologram path including a second beam splitter that splits the light into a first path and a second path, the first path including a mirror that reflects the emitted light back to the second beam splitter, and the second path including a beam expander that receives and collimates the reflected light and an angled beam splitter that reflects the collimated light at an off-axis angle;
- and
- a light sensor that captures light reflected off of the object to obtain an intensity image for the collimated line and captures off-axis light from the angled beam splitter to obtain an off-axis hologram for the collimated line.
A method for performing quantitative phase-contrast confocal microscopy on an object, the method comprising:
- (a) splitting light from a light source along two different paths including an illumination path and a hologram path;
- (b) focusing the light along the illumination path onto a portion of the object as a collimated line;
- (c) delivering the light along the hologram path to the light sensor at an angle relative to light reflected from the object so as to obtain an off-axis line hologram;
- (d) reconstructing a line of intensity information and a line of phase information from the off-axis line hologram by applying a numerical slit to the off-axis line hologram;
- (e) refocusing the light along the illumination path as a collimated line onto a different portion of the object and repeating steps (c) and (d) to obtain a further line of intensity information and a further line of phase information;
- (f) repeating step (e) until a plurality of lines of intensity information and a plurality of lines of phase information have been obtained;
- (g) reconstructing a full-field intensity image for the object by stitching the plurality of lines of intensity information together;
- and
- (h) reconstructing a full-field phase image for the object by stitching the plurality of lines of phase information together.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.