Computational quantitative phase imaging

In this talk, we provide an overview of the basic principle, research fields, and representative applications of TIE, focusing particularly on optical imaging, metrology, and microscopy. In particular, we present a new type of label-free three-dimensional (3D) microscopy technique, termed transport of intensity diffraction tomography (TIDT). Without resorting to interferometric detection, TIDT-NSA retrieves the 3D refractive index (RI) distribution of biological specimens from 3D intensity-only measurements based on off-the-shelf bright-field microscope hardware, allowing incoherent-diffraction-limited quantitative 3D phase-contrast imaging. These results highlight a new era in which strict coherence and interferometry are no longer prerequisites for quantitative phase imaging and diffraction tomography, paving the way toward a new generation of label-free three-dimensional microscopy, with applications in all branches of biomedicine.