Numerical refocusing in digital holographic microscopy with extended-sources illumination.

Numerical refocusing can be seen as a method of compensating the defocus aberration based on deconvolution by inverse filtering [1] in digital holographic microscopy (DHM). It is well-understood in cases when a coherent (ie point and monochromatic) light source such as a collimated laser beam is used [2]. This paper extends the theory to the case of illumination by a quasi-monochromatic extended (spatially incoherent) source. Refocusing methods for spatially incoherent illumination are derived and benefits of this type of illumination are demonstrated. We have proved both theoretically and experimentally that coherent-based refocusing gives incorrect results for extended-source illumination, while results obtained using the newly derived method are correct.