Accurate quantitative phase imaging through telecentric digital holographic microscopy

The use of non-telecentric imaging systems in quantitative phase digital holographic microscopy introduces strong inaccuracies. We show that even negligible errors in the radius and center of curvature of the remaining quadratic phase factor introduce big errors in the numerical phase measurements. The errors depend on the position of the object in the field-of-view. However, when a telecentric imaging system is utilized for the recording of the holograms, the hybrid imaging method shows shift-invariant behavior, and therefore accurate quantitative phase imaging can be performed. © 2014 SPIE