Patent application number | Description | Published |
20080231857 | Sensor system and sampling cell assembly for use with sensor system - A sensor system for detection of a gaseous chemical substance is provided, which includes an optical sampling cell holding a sampling chamber of a volume of at most 20 mm | 09-25-2008 |
20080265130 | Wave Front Sensing Method and Apparatus - A new way of mixing instrumental and digital means is described for the general field of wave front sensing. The present invention describes the use, the definition and the utility of digital operators, called digital wave front operators (DWFO) or digital lenses (DL), specifically designed for the digital processing of wave fronts defined in amplitude and phase. DWFO are of particular interest for correcting undesired wave front deformations induced by instrumental defects or experimental errors. DWFO may be defined using a mathematical model, e.g. a polynomial function, which involves coefficients. The present invention describes automated and semi-automated procedures for calibrating or adjusting the values of these coefficients. These procedures are based on the fitting of mathematical models on reference data extracted from specific regions of a wave front called reference areas, which are characterized by the fact that specimen contributions are a priori known in reference areas. For example, reference areas can be defined in regions where flat surfaces of a specimen produce a constant phase function. The present invention describes also how DWFO can be defined by extracting reference data along one-dimensional (1D) profiles. DWFO can also be defined in order to obtain a flattened representation of non-flat area of a specimen. Several DWFO or DL can be combined, possibly in addition with procedures for calculating numerically the propagation of wave fronts. A DWFO may also be defined experimentally, e.g. by calibration procedures using reference specimens. A method for generating a DWFO by filtering in the Fourier plane is also described. All wave front sensing techniques may benefit from the present invention. The case of a wave front sensor based on digital holography, e.g. a digital holographic microscope (DHM), is described in more details. The use of DWFO improves the performance, in particular speed and precision, and the ease of use of instruments for wave front sensing. The use of DWFO results in instrumental simplifications, costs reductions, and enlarged the field of applications. The present invention defines a new technique for imaging and metrology with a large field of applications in material and life sciences, for research and industrial applications. | 10-30-2008 |
20120038931 | MONITORING ENERGY AND MATTER FLUXES BY USE OF ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATIONS - Apparatus and method are provided for monitoring and measuring matter and energy fluxes by use of devices able to detect refractive index changes. In one aspect, apparatus use an interference between two electromagnetic radiations in order to provide high sensitivity, enabling fluxes monitoring at the microscopic scale, by measuring phase changes or Optical Path Length (OPL) changes. In one aspect, methods are provided for monitoring and measuring the electrical activity of a biological cells, simultaneously on several cells, without use of electrodes and contrast agents. | 02-16-2012 |
20120116703 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ENHANCED SPATIAL BANDWIDTH WAVEFRONTS RECONSTRUCTED FROM DIGITAL INTERFEROGRAMS OR HOLOGRAMS - The present invention discloses a method and an apparatus to compute a complex wavefield, referred to as the object wave o, by means of measuring the intensity signal resulting from the interference of the said object wave with a second wave termed the reference wave. The second wave r is assumed to have some non-vanishing mutual coherence with the said object wave o. The reference wave can be obtained from a source or from the object wave itself. The wave may be emitted from sources of variable degree of coherence and can be scattered waves, but also light-emitting molecules, matter waves such as electron beams or acoustical sources. The disclosed method relates to the said “non-linear method” (NLM). The innovation resides in the fact that the NLM improves considerably the bandwidth of the wavefront reconstructed from off-axis interferograms and holograms obtained in a single shot. The advantage is the significant improvement of the resolution of the images obtained from the reconstructed wavefront, i.e. amplitude and phase images. The said method also suppresses the artifacts resulting from the intensity recording of interferograms and holograms. The method is general in the sense that it can be used for any interferometric measurement, provided that it satisfies the simple requirement that the intensity of the reference wave is larger than the intensity of the object wave, and that the object wave modulated by the reference is confined to at least a quadrant of the spectrum. The disclosed method applies to interferometry, holography in optics, electron waves and acoustics. In particular, it can be implemented in phase, fluorescence, luminescence, electron and acoustic microscopy. | 05-10-2012 |
20130057869 | COMPLEX INDEX REFRACTION TOMOGRAPHY WITH SUB LAMBDA/6-RESOLUTION - The present invention discloses a method to improve the image resolution of a microscope. This improvement is based on the mathematical processing of the complex field computed from the measurements with a microscope of the wave emitted or scattered by the specimen. This wave is, in a preferred embodiment, electromagnetic or optical for an optical microscope, but can be also of different kind like acoustical or matter waves. The disclosed invention makes use of the quantitative phase microscopy techniques known in the sate of the art or to be invented. In a preferred embodiment, the complex field provided by Digital Holographic Microscopy (DHM), but any kind of microscopy derived from quantitative phase microscopy: modified DIC, Shack-Hartmann wavefront analyzer or any analyzer derived from a similar principle, such as multi-level lateral shearing interferometers or common-path interferometers, or devices that convert stacks of intensity images (transport if intensity techniques: TIT) into quantitative phase image can be used, provided that they deliver a comprehensive measure of the complex scattered wavefield. The hereby-disclosed method delivers superresolution microscopic images of the specimen, i.e. images with a resolution beyond the Rayleigh limit of the microscope. It is shown that the limit of resolution with coherent illumination can be improved by a factor of 6 at least. It is taught that the gain in resolution arises from the mathematical digital processing of the phase as well as of the amplitude of the complex field scattered by the observed specimen. In a first embodiment, the invention teaches how the experimental observation of systematically occurring phase singularities in phase imaging of sub-Rayleigh distanced objects can be exploited to relate the locus of the phase singularities to the sub-Rayleigh distance of point sources, not resolved in usual diffraction limited microscopy. In a second, preferred embodiment, the disclosed method teaches how the image resolution is improved by complex deconvolution. Accessing the object's scattered complex field—containing the information coded in the phase—and deconvolving it with the reconstructed complex transfer function (CTF) is at the basis of the disclosed method. In a third, preferred embodiment, it is taught how the concept of “Synthetic Coherent Transfer Function” (SCTF), based on Debye scalar or Vector model includes experimental parameters of MO and how the experimental Amplitude Point Spread Functions (APSF) are used for the SCTF determination. It is also taught how to derive APSF from the measurement of the complex field scattered by a nanohole in a metallic film. In a fourth embodiment, the invention teaches how the limit of resolution can be extended to a limit of λ/6 or smaller based angular scanning. In a fifth embodiment, the invention teaches how the presented method can generalized to a tomographic approach that ultimately results in super-resolved 3D refractive index reconstruction. | 03-07-2013 |
20130210066 | APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR EARLY DIAGNOSIS OF CELL DEATH - An apparatus for measuring through optical means temporally resolved, optical properties, and/or phenotypes, linked to cellular homeostasis. Those temporal measurements enable the detection of cell regulation through various channels linked to homeostasis, in order to assess cell viability or early cell death through rapid diagnostic. | 08-15-2013 |
20140347672 | APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR QUANTITIVE PHASE TOMOGRAPHY THROUGH LINEAR SCANNING WITH COHERENT AND NON-COHERENT DETECTION - The disclosed invention describes a new apparatus performing a new data acquisition for quantitative refractive index tomography. It is based on a linear scanning of the specimen, opposed to the classical approaches based on rotations of either the sample or the illumination beam, which are based on the illumination with plane waves, which orientation is successively modified in order to acquire angular information. On the contrary, the inventive apparatus and method rely on a specially shaped illumination, which provides straightforwardly an angular distribution in the illumination of the specimen. The specimen can thus be linearly scanned in the object plane in order to acquire the data set enabling tomographic reconstruction, where the different positions directly possess the information on various angles for the incoming wave vectors. | 11-27-2014 |