Fluorescence Talbot microscope using incoherent source

Abstract

Fluorescence Talbot microscope is a scalable field-of-view (FOV) imaging platform, which takes advantage of the phase sensitivity of the self-image of a periodic structure. Such a system can maintain the microscopic resolution and extend the FOV for the whole slide (15  mm×15  mm) scanning. Previously reported Talbot fluorescence systems, tabletop and on-chip device alike, rely on the coherence of the illumination source, limiting their potential applications in low-resource setting environment. A more cost-effective setup using a light-emitting diode, which has an area of 4  mm2 and a full width at half maximum of 16 nm in wavelength, is demonstrated. Compared to the illumination that is spatially filtered by a single pinhole, our system has achieved an illumination intensity that is 357 times higher. The reconstructed image quality is comparable to that of a 10× microscope objective. Various samples, such as fluorescent beads, green fluorescence protein-labeled HeLa cells, and a mouse kidney slide, were reconstructed by the system.