Using symmetric illumination and color camera to achieve high throughput Fourier ptychographic microscopy

Abstract This study aims to develop a high throughput Fourier ptychographic microscopy (FPM) technique based on symmetric illumination and a color detector, which is able to accelerate image acquisition by up to 12 times. As an emerging technology, the efficiency of FPM is limited by its data acquisition process, especially for color microscope image reconstruction. To overcome this, we built an FPM prototype equipped with a color camera and a 4×/0.13 NA objective lens. During the image acquisition, two symmetric LEDs illuminate the sample simultaneously using white light, which doubles the light intensity and reduces the total captured raw patterns by half. A standard USAF 1951 resolution target was used to measure the system's modulation transfer function (MTF) curve, and the H&E‐stained ovarian cancer samples were then imaged to assess the feature qualities depicted on the reconstructed images. The results showed that the measured MTF curves of red, green, and blue channels are generally comparable to the corresponding curves generated by conventional FPM, while symmetric illumination FPM preserves more tissue details, which is superior to the results captured by conventional 20×/0.4 NA objective lens. This investigation initially verified the feasibility of symmetric illumination based color FPM.