Recent Advances in the Application of Digital Holographic Microscopy

Abstract

Holography is a technique by which a wavefront can be recorded and subsequently reconstructed in the absence of the original wavefront. In conventional holography, invented by Gabor, the holograms are photographically recorded and optically reconstructed. Digital holography is an emerging new field in imaging applications, mainly in microscopy. By replacing the photochemical procedures with electronic recording of a hologram and its digital reconstruction, a wide range of new imaging capabilities become available. Once the amplitude and the phase of the light wave are recorded numerically, one can easily subject these data to a variety of manipulations, and so digital holography offers capabilities not available in conventional holography. An increasing number of researchers are realizing and exploiting the remarkable capabilities of digital holography. A brief review of the research carried out at the Agricultural University of Plovdiv in the area of digital holographic microscopy is presented. Recent applications of DIHM in materials studies are reported, in particular studies of polymer-zeolite nanocomposites.