Combining Computational & Holographic Methods to Improve the Imaging Depth of Microscopy

This research aims to advance the frontier of imaging through opaque materials, such as biological tissues. Recent advancements in adaptive optics have shown that scattered light can be harnessed to refocus through such media by treating the induced aberrations as an inverse problem. However, refocusing light not only through but also within opaque media is less straightforward. While techniques have been developed to transmit light through these media, few address non-invasive refocusing within them. This thesis addresses this challenge in three primary ways. First, we present a differential phase contrast microscope that leverages light's polarisation properties and the optical memory effect to capture the phase delay caused by objects through significant scattering layers, equivalent to 135 micrometres of human skin. Next, we introduce the Scattering Network, a novel method for calculating light scattering at unprecedented system scales (21 million cubic wavelengths) with exceptional efficiency (13 minutes). Lastly, we present our new, efficient direct diagonal deconvolution pipeline method for light sheets. We use it to, for the first time, extend the Airy beam light-sheet microscopy to a diagonal modality. We employ the new microscope to image live chicken embryos.