Coded wavefront sensing for video-rate quantitative phase imaging and tomography: validation with digital holographic microscopy

We demonstrate coded wavefront sensing (Coded WFS) for video-rate quantitative phase imaging and 3D refractive index (RI) tomography of biological specimens. To evaluate the accuracy, we implement an experimental setup that supports measurements of specimens with Coded WFS as well as with digital holographic microscopy (DHM) under identical conditions, enabling direct comparison. We image a static 3D phantom fabricated via additive manufacturing and a rotating HEK293 cell in an acoustofluidic chamber. Our results demonstrate good agreement between the two methods, with the advantage that, in contrast to DHM, Coded WFS enables simple integration with standard microscopes. Furthermore, we apply a standard tomographic reconstruction algorithm to the HEK293 cell data for comparison, which demonstrates the potential of Coded WFS in tomography.