Traditional microscopy provides only for a small set of magnifications using a finite set of microscope objectives. Here, a novel architecture is proposed for quantitative phase microscopy that requires only a simple adaptation of the traditional off-axis digital holographic microscope. The architecture has the key advantage of continuously variable magnification, resolution, and Field-of-View, by simply moving the sample. The method is based on combining the principles of traditional off-axis digital holographic microscopy and Gabor microscopy, which uses a diverging spherical wavefield for magnification. We present a proof-of-concept implementation and ray-tracing is used to model the magnification, Numerical Aperture, and Field-of-View as a function of sample position. Experimental results are presented using a micro-lens array and shortcomings of the method are highlighted for future work; in particular, the problem of aberration is highlighted, which results from imaging far from the focal plane of the infinity corrected microscope objective.
Colligated multiplexing approach to expanding the field of view in the recording process of digital holographic microscopy