Tensorial tomographic differential phase-contrast microscopy

Shiqi Xu, Xiang Dai, Xi Yang, Kevin C. Zhou, Kanghyun Kim, Vinayak Pathak, Carolyn Glass, Roarke Horstmeyer

Abstract: We report Tensorial Tomographic Differential Phase-Contrast microscopy (T <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> DPC), a quantitative label-free tomographic imaging method for simultaneous measurement of phase and anisotropy. T <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> DPC extends differential phase-contrast microscopy, a quantitative phase imaging technique, to highlight the vectorial nature of light. The method solves for permittivity tensor of anisotropic samples from intensity measurements acquired with a standard microscope equipped with an LED matrix, a circular polarizer, and a polarization-sensitive camera. We demonstrate accurate volumetric reconstructions of refractive index, birefringence, and orientation for various validation samples, and show that the reconstructed polarization structures of a biological specimen are predictive of pathology.