Simple and fast spectral domain algorithm for quantitative phase imaging of living cells with digital holographic microscopy.

We present a simple and fast phase aberration compensation method in digital holographic microscopy (DHM) for quantitative phase imaging of living cells. By analyzing the frequency spectrum of an off-axis hologram, phase aberrations can be compensated for automatically without fitting or pre-knowledge of the setup and/or the object. Simple and effective computation makes the method suitable for quantitative online monitoring with highly variable DHM systems. Results from automated quantitative phase imaging of living NIH-3T3 mouse fibroblasts demonstrate the effectiveness and the feasibility of the method.