Parallel-mode scanning optical sectioning using digital Fresnel holography with three-wave interference phase-shifting.

The Fresnel incoherent correlation holography (FINCH) method is applicable to various techniques of imaging, including fluorescence microscopy. Recently, a FINCH configuration capable of optical sectioning, using a scanning phase pinhole, has been suggested [Optica 1, 70 (2014)]. This capability is highly important in situations that demand the suppression of out-of-focus information from the hologram reconstruction of a specific plane of interest, such as the imaging of thick samples in biology. In this study, parallel-mode scanning using multiple phase pinholes is suggested as a means to shorten the acquisition time in an optical sectioning FINCH configuration. The parallel-mode scanning is enabled through a phase-shifting procedure that extracts the mixed term of two out of three interfering beams.