Full field deformation measurement of centimeter sized objects using optical phase retrieval

Abstract Most papers in the field of optical phase retrieval either consider only the intensity (or amplitude) profile of the object under inspection (or scatterer location in the X-ray version), or a uniform tilt/rotation of the object beam. However, phase retrieval is able to recover the phase profile of the object (beam) as well, which theoretically makes the observable interference of phase retrieved object waves possible. In this paper we demonstrate this principle experimentally on centimeter sized deformable reflective objects (as large as 40 mm by 40 mm) and corresponding simulations are also presented. When the CCD camera is moved along the optical axis in the Fresnel region, the interference fringes of the displacement field have low contrast. On the other hand, when an imaging setup is built, and the camera moves near the image plane, high fringe contrast can be obtained. These fringes however suffer from some phase error. In our work the iterative modulus projection algorithm was used as a simply implementable phase retrieval method.