Inverse dynamical photon scattering (IDPS): an artificial neural network based algorithm for three-dimensional quantitative imaging in optical microscopy.

Inverse dynamical photon scattering (IDPS), an artificial neural network based algorithm for three-dimensional quantitative imaging in optical microscopy, is introduced. Because the inverse problem entails numerical minimization of an explicit error metric, it becomes possible to freely choose a more robust metric, to introduce regularization of the solution, and to retrieve unknown experimental settings or microscope values, while the starting guess is simply set to zero. The regularization is accomplished through an alternate directions augmented Lagrangian approach, implemented on a graphics processing unit. These improvements are demonstrated on open source experimental data, retrieving three-dimensional amplitude and phase for a thick specimen. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America