Systems and methods for uniquely identifying fluid-phase products by endowing them with fingerprints composed of dispersed colloidal particles, and by reading out those fingerprints on demand using Total Holographic Characterization. A library of chemically inert colloidal particles is developed that can be dispersed into soft materials, the stoichiometry of the mixture encoding user-specified information, including information about the host material. Encoded information then can be recovered by high-speed analysis of holographic microscopy images of the dispersed particles. Specifically, holograms of individual colloidal spheres are analyzed with predictions of the theory of light scattering to measure each sphere's radius and refractive index, thereby building up the distribution of particle properties one particle at a time. A complete analysis of a colloidal fingerprint requires several thousand single-particle holograms and can be completed in ten minutes.

A device (110) for illuminating a particle comprises: a light waveguide (112; 412a, 412b; 512a, 512b) arranged on a substrate (114); an output coupler (118) configured to output a light beam (150; 450a, 450b; 550a, 550b) forming a sheet-like shape having a cross-section which has an extension in a first direction being larger than a size of a particle; and a fluidic channel (116; 416; 516) arranged on the substrate (114) for guiding a flow of particles along a longitudinal direction of the fluidic channel (116; 416; 516); wherein the sheet-like shape of the light beam (150; 450a, 450b; 550a, 550b) is arranged within the fluidic channel (116; 416; 516) and the first direction of the cross-section of the light beam (150; 450a, 450b; 550a, 550b) forms an angle to the longitudinal direction of the fluidic channel (116; 416; 516). A system (100) for imaging the particle comprises the device, an array (130; 430a, 430b; 530) of light-detecting elements (132; 432a, 432b; 532); and a lens (120) to converge light towards the array (130; 430a, 430b; 530) such that each light-detecting element (132; 432a, 432b; 532) detects light originating from a corresponding position in the fluidic channel (116; 416; 516).

A method for characterizing a particle present in a sample, the sample lying between an image sensor and a light source and the sensor lying in a detection plane, includes illuminating the sample with the light source which emits an incident light wave propagating along a propagation axis, and acquiring an image of the sample with the sensor. The sensor is exposed to an exposure light wave. The image includes a plurality of elementary diffraction patterns each corresponding to one particle. The method also includes reconstructing a complex image representative of a complex amplitude of the light wave on a reconstruction surface passing through the sample, based on the acquired image; selecting a region of interest of the complex image corresponding to a particle of interest; forming an extracted image based on the region of interest; and characterizing the particle of interest depending on the extracted region of interest.

A geometric phase in-line scanning holography system for a transmissive object, includes: a polarization sensitive lens, which receives a linear polarization beam to generate a first spherical wave of right-sided circularly polarized light and a second spherical wave of left-sided circularly polarized light; a scan means for scanning the transmissive object by using an interference beam generated between the generated first and second spherical waves; a first beam splitter, which receives a beam having been transmitted through the transmissive object, so as to split the received beam into first and second output beams; first and second polarizers for polarizing the first and second output beams, respectively; and first and second photodetectors for detecting output beams having passed through the first and second polarizers.

Disclosed are optical interrogation apparatus that can produce lens-free images using an optoelectronic sensor array to generate a holographic image of sample objects, such as microorganisms in a sample. Also disclosed are methods of detecting and/or identifying microorganisms in a biological sample, such as microorganisms present in low levels. Also disclosed are methods of using systems to detect microorganisms in a biological sample, such as microorganisms present in low levels. In addition or as an alternative, the methods of using systems may identify microorganisms present in a sample and/or determine antimicrobial susceptibility of such microorganisms.

A trained deep neural network transforms an image of a sample obtained with a holographic microscope to an image that substantially resembles a microscopy image obtained with a microscope having a different microscopy image modality. Examples of different imaging modalities include bright-field, fluorescence, and dark-field. For bright-field applications, deep learning brings bright-field microscopy contrast to holographic images of a sample, bridging the volumetric imaging capability of holography with the speckle-free and artifact-free image contrast of bright-field microscopy. Holographic microscopy images obtained with a holographic microscope are input into a trained deep neural network to perform cross-modality image transformation from a digitally back-propagated hologram corresponding to a particular depth within a sample volume into an image that substantially resembles a microscopy image of the sample obtained at the same particular depth with a microscope having the different microscopy image modality.

Example embodiments relate to methods and imaging systems for holographic imaging. One embodiment includes a method for holographic imaging of an object. The method includes driving a laser using a current which is below a threshold current of the laser. The method also includes illuminating the object using illumination light output by the laser. Further, the method includes detecting an interference pattern formed by object light, having interacted with the object, and reference light of the illumination light.

A system for lens-free imaging includes a processor in communication with a lens-free image sensor. The processor is programmed to operate the image sensor to obtain a hologram ??. The processor is further programmed to generate, from the hologram, a reconstructed image X and phase W at a focal depth z using an assumption of sparsity.

Provided are on-axis and off-axis digital hologram generating device and method. The on-axis and off-axis digital hologram generating device includes an object phase generator configured to access a phase file of an object stored in a storage device and generate object phase information from the phase file of the object; a digital object light generator configured to generate digital object light information based on a light property of object light input by a user and the object phase information generated by the object phase generator; a digital reference light generator configured to generate digital reference light information based on a light property of reference light input by the user; and a digital hologram generator configured to generate a digital hologram based on hologram property information input by the user, the digital object light information generated by the digital object light generator, and the digital reference light information generated by the digital reference light generator.

A method for observing a sample by lensless imaging, in which a sample is positioned between a laser diode and an image sensor, the laser diode being supplied with a supply current whose intensity is less than or equal to a critical value. This critical intensity is determined during preliminary operations, during which the intensity is initially greater than a laser threshold of the diode. By observing the image formed at the image sensor, the intensity is decreased until an attenuation of the interference images on the formed image is observed, the critical intensity corresponding to the intensity at which this attenuation is optimum.