Isotropic quantitative differential phase contrast microscopic imaging

Differential phase contrast microscopic (DPCM) imaging is a popular methodology to recover quantitative phase image of thin transparent sample under multi-axis intensity measurements. To improve the accuracy and stability of phase recovery in conventional DPCM imaging effectively, we propose a new illumination method to achieve isotropic differential phase contrast microscopic (iDPCM) imaging efficiently. Our iDPCM imaging is implemented with a partially coherent microscopy, and a programmable thin-film transistor panel to modulate the illumination pattern. We demonstrate our theoretical approach for iDPCM imaging and experimental results of quantitative phase image of a microlens array and unstained live human cells.