Grating deployed total-shear 3-beam interference microscopy with reduced temporal coherence

Interference microscopy is a powerful optical imaging technique providing quantitative phase distribution information to characterize various type technical and biomedical objects. Static and dynamic objects and processes can be investigated. In this paper we propose very compact, common-path and partially coherent diffraction grating-based interference microscopy system for studying small objects like single cells with low densities being sparsely distributed in the field of view. Simple binary amplitude diffraction grating is the only additional element to be introduced into a conventional microscope optical system. By placing it at a proper distance in front of the microscope image plane the total-shear operation mode is deployed resulting in interferograms of the object-reference beam type. Depending on the grating to image plane separation distance two or three-beam interferograms are generated. The latter ones are advantageous since they contain achromatic second harmonics in the interferogram intensity distributions. This feature enables to use reduced temporal coherence light sources for the microscope to reduce coherent noise and parasitic interference patterns. For this purpose we employ the laser diode with driving current below the threshold one. Results of conducted experiments including automatic computer processing of interferograms fully corroborate analytical description of the proposed method and illustrate its capabilities for studying static and dynamic phase objects.