Oliver Lowenstein

Holographic microscopy is a particle imaging technique with many scientific applications. Like all imaging techniques, it is susceptible to aberration – the distortion of a beam of light caused when it passees through a lens. In holographic microscopy, aberrations make it harder or even impossible to analyze the data from particles of certain sizes and materials. The Grier lab at NYU hypothesizes that the effects of aberration in holographic data can be neutralized during the analysis phase as opposed to by trying to better calibrate the instrument. To do this, data will be recorded first on an unaberrated holographic microscope and then again after the correction collar of the lens has been adjusted to cause aberrations. Both sets of data will then be analyzed with the aberration correction to see if the results were equivalent. This would mean that while the fits of the unaberrated holograms and aberrated holograms would be widely different, once the aberration correction was applied all parameters would be within 5% margin of error of each other. If this aberration correction works, it will allow holographic microscopes to function faster – as it cuts down on computational effort – and at a lower cost due as it avoids the addition of aberration correcting optics and will hopefully make holographic microscopes more broadly useful.