Hybrid holographic microscopy free of conjugate and zero-order images.

The true image area that can be used for recording microscopic objects in hybrid holographic microscopy can be increased by elimination of the conjugate image and the zero-order image. We therefore added two shutters and one phase modulator to the electro-optical holographic recording system so that we could change the recording parameters and evaluate four methods of eliminating the conjugate image and the zero-order image. We found that the methods that use only the phase modulator require the recording of fewer holograms than do the methods that use the shutters and also provide reconstructed images that are less noisy.