A customizable digital holographic microscope

This system is built around a commercial optical microscope by substituting its illumination source (a light-emitting diode) with a collimated laser beam. Similarly, a quartz flow cell replaces the microscope glass slide using 3D-printed custom mounting.

With the hardware presented in this paper, the holographic imaging of the electromagnetic fields emitted by the objects that intercept the laser beam achieves a resolution close to that achieved with optical microscopes, but with a much larger depth of field. Once a hologram is recorded, a variety of morphological and optical features, including particle projected section, aspect ratio, and extinction cross-section can be extracted.