Accurate approach to capillary-supported optical diffraction tomography.

ABSTRACT

A new holographic data processing path for accurate quantitative tomographic reconstruction of 3D samples placed in a cylindrical capillary is proposed. The method considers strong unintentional focusing effects induced by the inner cylindrical boundary of the vessel 1) introduction of cylindrical wave illumination of a sample, and 2) object wave deformation. The first issue is addressed by developing an arbitrary illumination tomographic reconstruction algorithm based on filtered backpropagation, while the second by a novel correction algorithm utilizing the optical rays analysis. Moreover, the processing path includes a novel holographic method for correction of spherical aberration related to refraction at a planar surface. Utility of the developed data processing path is proven with numerical simulations and experimental measurement of a specially prepared test sample.