Breadth-First-Search based Phase Unwrapping Algorithm for Quantitative Phase Imaging

A breadth-first-search (BFS) based novel quality-guided phase unwrapping (PU) algorithm is proposed. The BFS algorithm is assisted with the non-uniformly segmented intervals over the range of phase quality values. On the contrary to common approach of unwrapping a pixel based on its quality value, the eligibility of a pixel to unwrap its neighbors is decided based on its quality value. The BFS algorithm provides high computational efficiency in the implementation of PU. The number of segments in which the phase quality range is divided into is appropriately selected to depending on the phase noise to achieve the robustness in the PU. Simulation examples and experimental results with phase images of A375 cancer cells and HeLa cells are reported to demonstrate the performance comparison among different PU algorithms.