Wave-front curvature compensation of polarization phase-shifting digital holography

Abstract An on-axis polarization phase-shifting digital holographic microscope, based on a normal upright optical microscope, is constructed to quantitatively measure both the amplitude and phase distributions of specimen. The condenser lens and microscope objective employed in the object beam path enhance the illumination and magnification of the image, however, they induce additional phase aberration of the object wave. The physical formation of the phase aberration is theoretically analyzed, and a formula for the object wave front involving the phase aberration in the CCD plane is derived. The phase aberration can be eliminated in the reconstruction procedure by measuring a specimen-free hologram and then fitting the aberration phase with a least square ellipsoidal model to determine the parameters of the system. This phase aberration compensation procedure also reduces some of noises in the reconstructed phase of the specimen. The practicability of this method is demonstrated by a test experiment on microlenses.