Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Spatial light interference microscopy (SLIM) is a highly sensitive quantitative phase imaging method, which is capable of unprecedented structure studies in biology and beyond. SLIM combines two classical ideas in optics and microscopy: Zernike's phase contrast method, by revealing the intrinsic contrast of transparent samples, and Gabor's holography, by quantitatively retrieving the phase information. SLIM provides the spatial uniformity associated with white light methods and the stability associated with common path interferometry. In addition, due to the short coherence length of the illumination, SLIM also provides excellent optical sectioning, enabling three dimensional tomography.