Multi-aperture Fourier ptychographic microscopy, theory and validation

We present a novel microscopy concept, termed Multi-Aperture Fourier ptychographic microscopy (MA-FPM), to enable implementation of parallel detectors in microscopy to increase the space-bandwidth-time product. MA-FPM is a synthetic aperture technique: an array of objectives together with tilt-shift illumination are used to synthesize high-resolution, wide field-of-view images. Here, the phase is recovered using Fourier ptychography (FP) algorithms unlike conventional optical synthetic aperture techniques where holographic measurements are used. In this article we report a proof-of-concept experiment by translating a lens and a detector to positions according to the proposed design and demonstrate high-quality imaging performance despite using nine-fold fewer illumination angles compared to an equivalent FP setup. Calibration procedures and a reconstruction algorithm were developed to address the challenges of multiple imaging systems