Lens free microscopy
Microscopy whether electron microscopy or with visible light requires lenses. For electron microscopy, lenses incur significant design challenges and add aberrations. A startup in UK uses technology invented by Professor John Rodenberg to remove lenses altogether and compute the image from the diffraction pattern of the sample. This is similar to a hologram where the diffraction pattern of the sample is compared to a reference beam. In this case there is no reference pattern but rather the computational power that enables back calculation to compute the sample diffraction.
The key uniqueness of the technology is to compute the phase of the waves from the intensity of the diffracted signal. This calculation enables the formation of aberration-free images of the object.
This method has superb advantages over conventional methods. First, it is possible to observe cells with white light without any stain. Second, the imaging can be done through flasks rather than thin and delicate coverslip.
