Scientific/Technological Excellence. The overall aim of the SI-PDHM project is to boost the scientific excellence and innovation capacity of the Institute of Applied Physics, Moldova State University, Moldova (IAP MSU) and the School of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Istanbul Medipol University, Türkiye (IMU) - to advance the polarized digital holographic microscopy by structured illumination (SI-PDHM) for biomedical applications. Digital holographic microscope (DHM) allows reconstructing quantitative phase images of biological objects in vivo and in vitro with interferometric accuracy. Changes in the characteristics of optical signals induced by the sample at the transmitted/reflected wavefront can be considered as powerful endogenous, i.e. sample inherent, research tool that allows non-invasive imaging of biological samples without the disruption inducing by various cell and molecular labeling techniques. Endogenous optical signals arise due to the biochemistry, nano- and microstructure of the displayed biosamples and include the optical phase and birefringence. Synergy of polarization measurements and DHM (PDHM) enables major advances in biological imaging, significantly increasing its functionalities and performance, and allowing it to emerge from a laboratory-driven to practical applications as medical diagnostic instrument. Structured lighting, e.g. in form of diffractive optical elements (DOE), can be implemented in PDHM to improve its performance. DOE with singularities have been established as promising optical components for advanced optical devices, especially in biomedicine, due to their ability to increase both the transverse and longitudinal resolution of the device. The combination of the vortex DOE as structured illumination pattern with PDHM give the possibilities to improve such PDHM's features as spatial resolution and depth of field.

The project directs to improve the performance of PDHM by introducing singular DOE, and to apply the developed technique in biomedicine to study the structure, morphology and anisotropy of biosamples.

Team