Epi-illumination diffraction phase microscopy with white light

Abstract

We demonstrate the first reflection-based epi-illumination diffraction phase microscope with white light (epi-wDPM). The epi-wDPM system combines the off-axis, common-path, and white light approaches, in a reflection geometry enabling sub-nanometer spatial and temporal noise levels, while providing single-shot acquisition for opaque samples. We verified the epi-wDPM results by measuring control samples with known dimensions and comparing them to measurements from other well-established techniques. We imaged gold-coated HeLa cells to illustrate the tradeoffs between epi-wDPM with low and high spatial coherence.