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Wide-field, high-resolution Fourier ptychographic microscopy

Nature Photonics volume 7, pages 739–745 (2013)Cite this article

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A Corrigendum to this article was published on 27 August 2015

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Abstract

We report an imaging method, termed Fourier ptychographic microscopy (FPM), which iteratively stitches together a number of variably illuminated, low-resolution intensity images in Fourier space to produce a wide-field, high-resolution complex sample image. By adopting a wavefront correction strategy, the FPM method can also correct for aberrations and digitally extend a microscope's depth of focus beyond the physical limitations of its optics.As a demonstration, we built a microscope prototype with a half-pitch resolution of 0.78 µm, a field of view of ∼120 mm2 and a resolution-invariant depth of focus of 0.3 mm (characterized at 632 nm). Gigapixel colour images of histology slides verify successful FPM operation. The reported imaging procedure transforms the general challenge of high-throughput, high-resolution microscopy from one that is coupled to the physical limitations of the system's optics to one that is solvable through computation.

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Figure 1: Iterative recovery procedure of FPM (five steps).
Figure 2: FPM prototype set-up.
Figure 3: Extending the depth of focus with digital wavefront correction.
Figure 4: Gigapixel colour imaging via FPM.

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Change history

  • 30 July 2015

    In the version of this Article originally published, the reported resolution for the microscope was the half-pitch resolution. However, the authors believe that with either coherent or incoherent light, full-pitch resolution offers a better definition of the imaging system limit. Therefore, the reported resolutions should have been 0.78 μm and 1.56 μm for half-pitch and full-pitch resolution, respectively. The achieved space–bandwidth product (SBP), defined for a complex signal using full-pitch resolution, is then ~0.23 x 109 pixels and the complex signal's Nyquist pixel area is 0.782 μm2. These corrections have been made in the online versions of the Article and Supplementary Note 3.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Xiaoze Ou for discussions and help with experiments. The authors acknowledge funding support from the National Institutes of Health (grant no. 1DP2OD007307-01).

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Author notes

  1. Guoan Zheng

    Present address: Present address: Biomedical Engineering and Electrical Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, 06269, USA,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Electrical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, 91125, California, USA

    Guoan Zheng, Roarke Horstmeyer & Changhuei Yang

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Contributions

G.Z. initiated this line of investigation, designed and implemented the project. G.Z., R.H. and C.Y. contributed, developed, refined the concept and wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Guoan Zheng.

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Competing interests

G.Z. and C.Y. are named inventors on a number of related patent applications. G.Z. and C.Y. also have a competing financial interest in Clearbridge Biophotonics and ePetri, Inc., which, however, did not support this work.

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Zheng, G., Horstmeyer, R. & Yang, C. Wide-field, high-resolution Fourier ptychographic microscopy. Nature Photon 7, 739–745 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2013.187

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