Aberration correction in coherence imaging microscopy using an image inverting interferometer

We present an imaging method with the ability to correct even large optical phase aberrations in a purely numerical way. For this purpose, the complex coherence function in the pupil plane of the microscope objective is measured with the help of an image inverting interferometer. By means of a Fourier transform, it is possible to reconstruct the spatially incoherent object distribution. We demonstrate that aberrations symmetric to the optical axis do not impair the imaging quality of such a coherence imaging system. Furthermore, we show that it is possible to gain an almost complete correction of remaining aberrations with the help of a reference measurement. A mathematical derivation is given and experimentally verified. To demonstrate the ability of our method, randomly generated aberrations with peak-to-valley values of up to 8 λ are corrected.