Portable Interferometric Phase Microscope (IPM)
Portable Interferometer for Low-Coherence Wide-Field IPM
The τ interferometer:
A new simple technique for wide-field IPM:
- Portable: Can be positioned in the output of a conventional inverted microscope.
- Inexpensive: Built using simple off-the-shelf optical elements.
- Very high performance: Obtained optical thickness profile with temporal stability of 0.18 nm and spatial stability of 0.42 nm.
- Easy to operate: No expert user is needed. Does not require the strict stability and the highly coherent illumination that are usually required for interferometric microscopy setups.
The τ interferometer ported into the output of an inverted microscope. The interference is created by splitting the magnified image from the microscope and effectively erasing the information from one of the beams by spatial filtering, before combining the beams again.
We believe that this technique will make interferometric phase microscopy more accessible and affordable for biologists and clinicians, while significantly broadening its range of applications.
The τ interferometer ported into the output of an inverted microscope. The interference is created by splitting the magnified image from the microscope and effectively erasing the information from one of the beams by spatial filtering, before combining the beams again.