Linearity and Optimum-Sampling in Photon-Counting Digital Holographic Microscopy

Abstract

In the image plane configurations frequently used in digital holographic microscopy (DHM) systems, interference patterns are captured by a photo-sensitive array detector located at the image plane of an input object. The object information in these patterns is localized and thus extremely sensitive to phase errors caused by nonlinear hologram recordings (grating profiles are either square or saturated sinusoidal) or inadequate sampling regarding the information coverage (undersampled around the Nyquist frequency or arbitrarily oversampled). Here, we propose a solution for both hologram recording problems through implementing a photon-counting detector (PCD) mounted on a motorized XY translation stage. In such a way, inherently linear (because of a wide dynamic range of PCD) and optimum sampled (due to adjustable steps) digital holograms in the image plane configuration are recorded. Optimum sampling is estimated based on numerical analysis. The validity of the proposed approach is confirmed experimentally.