Three-axis digital holographic microscopy for high speed volumetric imaging

Digital Holographic Microscopy allows to numerically retrieve three dimensional information encoded in a single 2D snapshot of the coherent superposition of a reference and a scattered beam. Since no mechanical scans are involved, holographic techniques have a superior performance in terms of achievable frame rates. Unfortunately, numerical reconstructions of scattered field by back-propagation leads to a poor axial resolution. Here we show that overlapping the three numerical reconstructions obtained by tilted red, green and blue beams results in a great improvement over the axial resolution and sectioning capabilities of holographic microscopy. A strong reduction in the coherent background noise is also observed when combining the volumetric reconstructions of the light fields at the three different wavelengths. We discuss the performance of our technique with two test objects: an array of four glass beads that are stacked along the optical axis and a freely diffusing rod shaped E.coli bacterium. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America