Optical Phase Retrieval for Determining the 3-D
Structure of Biological Cells

Investigators: Faculty Members J.Q. Lu, Ph.D., Physics, ECU X.H. Hu, Ph.D., Physics, ECU G.W. Kalmus, Ph.D., Biology, ECU Graduate Students M. Cariveau, Physics, ECU

Description The research project is based on the extraction of optical phase from the intensity distribution of the light transmitted through a cell and 3-d reconstruction with computed tomography (CT). The combination of the phase retrieval and CT has been reported in determining the refractive index distribution for a glass optical fiber with a diameter of 100mm. We will develop digital image processing algorithms to optimize the image contrast for phase retrieval and adapt existing CT algorithms to reconstruct the 3-d distribution of the optical phase from which the complex refractive index distribution inside the cells can be obtained. Based on these results we will establish a spectral database of various human cells between 300 and 1000nm in wavelength.