Microscopic three-dimensional imaging by digital interference holography

Digital interference holography (DIH) is being developed as a novel method of microscopic 3-D imaging. A number of holographic fields are numerically calculated from optically recorded holograms using a range of wavelengths. Numerical superposition of these fields results in a tomographic representation of the object with narrow axial resolution. We demonstrate the practicality of DIH in microscopic imaging with a set of preliminary experiments, yielding approximately 3 mum of lateral resolution and 10 mum of axial resolution, using a simple optical setup and straightforward numerical algorithms. (C) 2003 SPIE and IST.