Super-Bandwidth Two-Step Phase-Shifting Off-Axis Digital Holography by Optimizing Two-Dimensional Spatial Frequency Sampling Scheme

The presence of the auto correlation and twin cross correlation noises restrict the available spatial bandwidth of the holographic microscopy to much less than the available bandwidth of the digital sensor. Therefore, in order to record the same image area as conventional 2D intensity imaging techniques, several images should be taken. We present two-step phase-shifting off-axis digital holography with maximum space-bandwidth product for three-dimensional (3D) digital holography. Removing the autocorrelation term using a two-step phase-shifting technique significantly increases the available bandwidth for off-axis interferometry. An optimizing super-diagonal two-dimensional (2D) spatial frequency sampling scheme at the sub-Nyquist frequency is employed for performing off-axis interferometry in the absence of the autocorrelation term. The spatial bandwidth of the proposed two-step phase-shifting technique is 400% of that in square scheme off-axis digital holography. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of this technique in extracting the 3D morphology of transparent microscopic objects with a larger bandwidth.