Abstract
The light of a light-emitting diode or a common thermal source, such as a tungsten filament lamp, is known to be quasi-incoherent. We generated partially coherent light of these sources with a volume of coherence in the micrometer range of by spatial and spectral filtering. The corresponding degree of partial coherence was adapted for microscopic interference setups, such as a digital in-line holographic microscope. The practicability of the sources was determined by the spectral emittance and the resulting signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the detector. The microscale coherence in correlation with the SNR and its resolution for microscopy were analyzed. We demonstrate how low-light-level, non-laser sources enable holographic imaging with a video frame rate (), an intermediate SNR of 8 dB, and a volume of coherence of . Holograms of objects with a lateral resolution of 1 μm were achieved using a microscope lens () and a CCD camera featuring a 4–12 bit dynamic range.
©2012 Optical Society of America
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