Fully automated, high speed, tomographic phase object reconstruction using the transport of intensity equation in transmission and reflection configurations.

While traditional transport of intensity equation (TIE) based phase retrieval of a phase object is performed through axial translation of the CCD, in this work a tunable lens TIE is employed in both transmission and reflection configurations. These configurations are extended to a 360° tomographic 3D reconstruction through multiple illuminations from different angles by a custom fabricated rotating assembly of the phase object. Synchronization circuitry is developed to control the CCD camera and the Arduino board, which in its turn controls the tunable lens and the stepper motor to automate the tomographic reconstruction process. Finally, a MATLAB based user friendly graphical user interface is developed to control the whole system and perform tomographic reconstruction using both multiplicative and inverse radon based techniques.