Single-shot quantitative phase imaging: techniques, applications, and prospects

Since quantitative phase imaging provides an attractive, promising route for wavefront detecting and sensing, it is becoming a supplement to classical intensity imaging. Among various quantitative phase imaging techniques, single-shot ones can retrieve dynamic and even transient phase distributions; therefore, single-shot quantitative phase imaging is a useful tool, especially in dynamic detecting applications. This tutorial summarizes the state-of-the-art progress on single-shot quantitative phase imaging. First, single-shot tactics employed in quantitative phase imaging techniques, mainly holography, ptychography, transport of intensity equation imaging, and differential phase contrast imaging, are summarized. Moreover, applications of these techniques, especially live cell imaging, flow cytometry, laser wavefront sensing, and transient field measurements, are concluded, and current challenges and prospects of single-shot quantitative phase imaging are further addressed. Moreover, numerical simulation codes for the classical algorithms used in these quantitative phase imaging techniques are also provided. This tutorial comprehensively covers all the aspects of single-shot quantitative phase imaging, including techniques, applications, and prospects; thus, it can be a reference for the future development and improvement of quantitative phase imaging.