Michelson-based lateral shearing interference microscopy for quantitative phase measurement of biological cells

Abstract

Abstract Based on the structure of the Michelson interferometer, we present a lateral shearing interference microscopy to achieve the quantitative phase measurement of the transparent microscopic biological cells. For this interference microscopy, two right-angle prisms are used to substitute the two plane mirrors. Then, the lateral shear can be realized by horizontally moving one of the two right-angle prisms along the direction perpendicular to the optical axis. Moreover, the amount of lateral shear can be adjusted freely and can be increased by introducing a larger moving distance and/or simultaneously translating another right-angle prism. To simplify the experimental operation of phase calibration, the averaging method instead of the double exposure method is used to obtain accurate phase information. The subsequent experiments show that the proposed system is portable, compact, easy to implement, effective to control the cost, and capable of successfully obtaining the quantitative phase information of the biological cells.