Three-dimensional differential interference contrast microscopy using synthetic aperture imaging.

We implement differential interference contrast (DIC) microscopy using high-speed synthetic aperture imaging that expands the passband of coherent imaging by a factor of 2.2. For an aperture synthesized coherent image, we apply for the numerical post-processing and obtain a high-contrast DIC image for arbitrary shearing direction and bias retardation. In addition, we obtain images at different depths without a scanning objective lens by numerically propagating the acquired coherent images. Our method achieves high-resolution and high-contrast 3-D DIC imaging of live biological cells. The proposed method will be useful for monitoring 3-D dynamics of intracellular particles.