Quantitative polarization microscopy: a lensless digital holographic approach for full-field imaging and characterization

We discuss the design and imaging features of a compact digital inline polarization holography system capable of singleshot extraction of complex amplitude information and polarization sensitive information corresponding to an anisotropic sample. The proposed method exploits the lens-less and compact design characteristics of the inline holographic system for the development of a quantitative polarization microscopy system. The quantitative imaging capability and measurement accuracy of the microscopy system is experimentally validated by single-shot detection of the digital polarization in-line holograms and the real-time extraction of full-field imaging features corresponding to standard birefringent targets and real-valued anisotropic samples.