Transport of intensity phase microscopy combined with accelerated iteration for quantitative phase imaging

In this paper, we present a quantitative phase imaging approach which has the merits of high accuracy and less computational load. It starts with estimating phase from the transport of intensity equation that is later used as an initial estimate for the accelerated iteration of the Gerchberg–Saxton technique for phase estimation. The proposed technique has faster convergence characteristics that utilize the gradients at each iterative update step to estimate the actual phase value. Simulations and experimental studies related to microscopic objects have been implemented and verified. The proposed technique not only develops the ability of a traditional algorithm in terms of computation efficiency, but also provides a valuable processing foundation for novel-design imaging strategies. Therefore, in the future it may be used in life science applications, such as biological cell observation and even real-time dynamic measurement of living cells.