"Quantitative phase imaging for material and life sciences" by Gabriel Popescu

Seminar by Gabriel Popescu, Associate Professor in Electrical and Computer
Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Many samples of interest (e.g., a living cell or a water droplet) are transparent to visible radiation and, therefore, difficult to image with intensity-based methods. Phase contrast microscopy proposed by Zernike in the 1930’s represents a major advance, as it reveals inner details of transparent structures without staining or tagging. While phase contrast is sensitive to optical pathlength changes in the sample, the information retrieved is only qualitative. Quantifying shifts in the optical pathlength permits nanometer scale measurements of structures and motions in a non-contact, non-invasive manner. Thus, quantitative phase imaging (QPI) has recently enabled new studies in both material sciences, including monitoring of etching processes, evaporation of microdroplets, topography of nanostructures, and wafer inspection, as well as biomedical sciences: cell growth, membrane fluctuations, intracellular transport,  label-free tomography, blood screening, and cancer diagnosis.

I will review the main QPI methods developed in our laboratory as they apply to investigating transparent objects, both living and inanimate.

This seminar will be held in English.

Attend this seminar