sPhaseStation: a whole slide quantitative phase imaging system based on dual-view transport of intensity phase microscopy

Whole slide imaging scans a microscope slide into a high-resolution digital image, and it paves the way from pathology to digital diagnostics. However, most of them rely on bright-field and fluorescence imaging with sample labels. In this work, we designed sPhaseStation, which is a dual-view transport of intensity phase microscopy-based whole slide quantitative phase imaging system for label-free samples. sPhaseStation relies on a compact micro-scopic system with two imaging recorders that can capture both under and over-focus images. Combined with the field of view (FoV) scan, a series of these defocus images in different FoVs can be captured and stitched into two FoV-extended under and over-focus ones, which are used for phase retrieval via solving the transport of intensity equation. Using a 10x micro-objective, sPhaseStation reaches the spatial resolution of 2.19 mu m and obtains the phase with high accuracy. Additionally, it acquires a whole slide image of a 3 mm x 3 mm region in 2 min. The reported sPhaseStation could be a prototype of the whole slide quantitative phase imaging device, which may provide a new perspective for digital pathology. (c) 2023 Optica Publishing Group