Polarization-sensitive Fourier Ptychography Microscopy Using Dome-Shaped LED Illuminator

Polarization as an intrinsic property of electromagnetic waves is useful in microscopy imaging of anisotropic samples, specifically for studying the phase information and birefringence properties of samples. We used polarization-sensitive Fourier-ptychography method (pFPM) to construct birefringence map to show the optically anisotropy of the sample under test in a large field of view with higher resolution. The optic-axis orientation and phase retardation of the sample are extracted in a quantitative manner. The images are collected through a 10X objective lens with numerical aperture (NA(obj)) = 0.28 using a polarization sensitive camera. The pFPM phase retrieval algorithm is used to reconstruct the object with 548 nm resolution and synthetic NA (NA(synth)) = 0.54. The novelty in our approach lies in combining pFPM with a dome-shaped illumination, showing promise for high-performance quantitative polarimetric imaging.