Single-pixel compressive diffractive imaging

We present a method for observing complex amplitude fields by using a single-pixel camera without reference light and imaging optics. In the method, an object is illuminated with coherent light, and the propagating field is captured in multiple intensity measurements using a single photodetector and a spatial light modulator upon which different patterns are sequentially displayed. The object field is reconstructed from the intensity measurements with a compressive-sensing-based phase retrieval algorithm. Quantitative amplitude and phase imaging based on our method is experimentally demonstrated. In the experiments, objects were reconstructed from less than 10% of the number of measurements determined with conventional approaches.