Incoherent Digital Holography Empowered by Wavefront and Information Engineering: A Review

Incoherent digital holography (IDH) is a technique used to create holograms with a spatially incoherent light source. This technique has unlocked the potential of holography and expanded its applications to 3D fluorescence microscopy and 3D imaging under sunlight. Recent progress in IDH stems from wavefront engineering, in which the phase or polarization of light is tailored using a phase-only spatial light modulator, diffractive optics, metasurfaces, or unique optical configurations with refractive and/or reflective optical devices. Information engineering techniques, such as compressive sensing and deep learning, have also attracted attention in IDH, outperforming conventional optics-physics-based reconstruction. Through wavefront and information engineering, attractive features, such as single-shot recording and enhanced image quality, have been achieved in IDH systems. This paper reviews the basic theory of IDH and compares it to laser-based digital holography. Furthermore, an overview of the remarkable advances in IDH facilitated by wavefront and information engineering is presented. Finally, the outlook of wavefront and information engineering toward practical and diverse IDH applications is discussed, providing valuable insights for future studies.