Impact of boundary conditions on accuracy of quantitative phase imaging

Quantitative phase imaging (QPI) has gained extensive attention in the field of biomedical imaging and life sciences due to its unique ability to quantify the important physical characteristics of living cells and tissues without labeling. However, boundary conditions have always seriously affected the accuracy of QPI, which are frequently overlooked. When acquiring the original data, the sample being tested is habitually placed at the center of the field of view, unconsciously avoiding the influence of the boundary conditions, but this does not fundamentally solve the problem. When the size of the object being tested exceeds that of the imaging field of view (FOV), the boundary conditions cannot be avoided, and serious boundary artifacts will appear in the reconstructed FOV. In various QPI techniques, such as the transport of intensity equation (TIE), differential phase contrast (DPC), and Fourier ptychographic microscopy (FPM), it has been demonstrated that the boundary conditions can significantly impact the accuracy of the phase reconstruction. The most fundamental reason for the incorrect reconstruction results caused by the boundary conditions is the loss of information. This paper systematically studies the impact of the boundary conditions on the reconstruction accuracy of quantitative phase imaging and adaptive aberration correction based on FPM, and discusses the influence of data redundancy on boundary artifacts of phase reconstruction.