A team comprised of researchers from Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX has published a Nature Biomedical Engineering article titled "In vivo lensless microscopy via a phase mask generating diffraction patterns with high-contrast contours."
Abstract: The simple and compact optics of lensless microscopes and the associated computational algorithms allow for large fields of view and the refocusing of the captured images. However, existing lensless techniques cannot accurately reconstruct the typical low-contrast images of optically dense biological tissue. Here we show that lensless imaging of tissue in vivo can be achieved via an optical phase mask designed to create a point spread function consisting of high-contrast contours with a broad spectrum of spatial frequencies. We built a prototype lensless microscope incorporating the ‘contour’ phase mask and used it to image calcium dynamics in the cortex of live mice (over a field of view of about 16 mm2) and in freely moving Hydra vulgaris, as well as microvasculature in the oral mucosa of volunteers. The low cost, small form factor and computational refocusing capability of in vivo lensless microscopy may open it up to clinical uses, especially for imaging difficult-to-reach areas of the body.
Link to full article (open access): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-022-00851-z
Press release: https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Lensless_Camera_Captures_Cellular-Level_3D_Details/a67869
Indeed interesting but the spatial resolution and fixed pattern noise seem to be there. Is the pitch and/or the crosstalk of phase mask a limiting factor?
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