Photonic crystal fiber for high resolution lensless in-line holographic microscopy

Abstract: We propose to use high numerical aperture single mode optical fibers like photonic crystal fiber for lensless in-line holographic microscopy. Highly divergent beam helps to overcome the spatial sampling limitation of the image sensor. In this paper, a submicron lateral resolution has been demonstrated, with an imaging sensor of pixel pitch 1.12 micrometer and a photonic crystal fiber of mode field diameter 1.8 micrometer. In earlier methods of single-shot lensless imaging, submicron resolution has been obtained at very small working distance and field of view. The proposed method improves the resolution without compromising the working distance. A working distance of (but not limited to) ~1.7 mm with a field of View ~1.4 mm has been demonstrated.