Abstract
Digital Holographic Microscopy (DHM) is a new method for optical imaging and analysis that involves a numerical method for the reconstruction of holograms. An off-axis hologram of the specimen is created using an interferometric set-up and recorded by a CCD camera. The numerical reconstruction is performed within the framework of the Fresnel approximation. We show here that the DHM method can be applied to reconstruct simultaneously the distributions of intensity and phase of the optical field at the surface of microscopic specimen, with the same transverse resolution as with classical optical microscopy. We show also tl;at an important source of noise comes from the use of a light source of high coherence.