Interferenceless coded aperture correlation holography: history, development, and applications

Interferenceless coded aperture correlation holography (I-COACH) was developed in 2017 to achieve 3D imaging without two-beam interferences. In I-COACH, the imaging process consists of three steps: COACHing, recording and reconstruction. In the COACHing step, the point spread function (PSF) library is recorded. In the recording step, an object mounted within the axial boundaries of the PSF library is recorded, and the recording is processed with the PSF library in a computer to reconstruct the image of the object in the final step. During the past five years, I-COACH evolved rapidly into a significant incoherent holography technique breaking the limits of almost all imaging characteristics such as lateral resolution, axial resolution, spectral resolution and field of view, not to mention, the ability to sense colour with a monochrome sensor. In this invited article, some of the major milestones in the evolution of I-COACH are briefly presented.