Complex-domain-enhancing neural network for large-scale coherent imaging

Abstract. Large-scale computational imaging can provide remarkable space-bandwidth product that is beyond the limit of optical systems. In coherent imaging (CI), the joint reconstruction of amplitude and phase further expands the information throughput and sheds light on label-free observation of biological samples at micro- or even nano-levels. The existing large-scale CI techniques usually require scanning/modulation multiple times to guarantee measurement diversity and long exposure time to achieve a high signal-to-noise ratio. Such cumbersome procedures restrict clinical applications for rapid and low-phototoxicity cell imaging. In this work, a complex-domain-enhancing neural network for large-scale CI termed CI-CDNet is proposed for various large-scale CI modalities with satisfactory reconstruction quality and efficiency. CI-CDNet is able to exploit the latent coupling information between amplitude and phase (such as their same features), realizing multidimensional representations of the complex wavefront. The cross-field characterization framework empowers strong generalization and robustness for various coherent modalities, allowing high-quality and efficient imaging under extremely low exposure time and few data volume. We apply CI-CDNet in various large-scale CI modalities including Kramers–Kronig-relations holography, Fourier ptychographic microscopy, and lensless coded ptychography. A series of simulations and experiments validate that CI-CDNet can reduce exposure time and data volume by more than 1 order of magnitude. We further demonstrate that the high-quality reconstruction of CI-CDNet benefits the subsequent high-level semantic analysis.