Coherent microscopy for 3-D movement monitoring and super-resolved imaging

Abstract

In this chapter we present three types of microscopy-related configurations while the first one is used for 3-D movement monitoring of the inspected samples, the second one is used for super-resolved 3-D imaging, and the last one presents an overview digital holographic microscopy applications. The first configuration is based on temporal tracking of secondary reflected speckles when imaged by properly defocused optics. We validate the proposed scheme by using it to monitor 3-D spontaneous contraction of rat's cardiac muscle cells while allowing nanometric tracking accuracy without interferometric recording. The second configuration includes projection of temporally varying speckle patterns on top of the sample and by proper decoding exceeding the diffraction as well as the geometrical-related lateral resolution limitation. In the final part of the chapter, we overview applications of digital holographic microscopy (DHM) for real-time non-invasive 3-D sensing, tracking, and recognition of living microorganisms such as single-or multiple-cell organisms and bacteria. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011.