Structured Random Phase Retrieval using Optical Diffusers

Phase retrieval is a nonlinear inverse problem that arises in a wide range of imaging modalities, from electron microscopy to optical Fourier ptychography. Among various modalities, random phase retrieval stands out thanks to its strong theoretical guarantees and efficient reconstruction algorithms, although its applicability is hindered by prohibitive computational costs. In this paper, we propose the structured random models for phase retrieval, where we emulate a dense random matrix by a cascade of structured transforms and random diagonal matrices. We demonstrate that structured random models can achieve the same reconstruction performance as dense random models, with complexity reduced from quadratic to log-linear. Using a spectral method initialization followed by gradient descent, robust reconstruction is obtained at an oversampling ratio as low as 2.8. Moreover, we observe that the reconstruction performance is solely determined by the singular value distribution of the forward matrix. This class of models can directly be implemented with basic optical elements such as lenses and diffusers, paving the way for large-scale phase imaging with robust reconstruction guarantees.