Transmittance limit for Digital Holographic Microscopy

Estimates and plots the transmittance limit for a digital hologram in a 1-bit to 16-bit representation for the given setup parameters.

Retrieval of accurate phase maps from Digital Holographic Microscopy (DHM) is highly dependent on the representation of the carrier fringe pattern in the digital sensor. Physically, the contrast of the fringes is given by the degree of coherence of the illumination (γ), the intensity relation between the interferometer arms (), the modulation transfer function of the sensor (), and the local transmittance of the sample (). However, once digitalized, it also depends on the bit-depth of the camera's ADC.

This script allows the user to establish the aforementioned parameters and predict the lower limit of the allowable transmittance for each possible bit-depth of the sensor between 1-bit and 16-bit.

Further details regarding the theory supporting this tool can be found in a manuscript currently under peer-review. This description will be updated once the document is made available online.