Digital quantitative phase recovery from focal series of brightfield microscopy images

Abstract

The goal of this project is to recover digital quantitative phase from a focal series of brightÞeld microscopy images. When one want to observe biological material with a bright-field microscopy, staining can be used. Unfortunately, staining is not possible for living cells, or for materials that do not absorb dyes. In this case one can observe unstained specimens with a Differential Interference Contrast microscope (DIC) or a Phase Contrast microscope. The drawbacks of such tools are that they are very expensive and that they are only used for visualisation purposes.

The goal of this project, based on different papers, is therefore to implement a theoretical model that given a series of brightÞeld microscopy images will output the quantitative phase. Making this model work in practice will therefore lead to a very simple way to recover phase from unstainable specimens.