Dual wavelength full field imaging in low coherence digital holographic microscopy

A diffractive optical element (DOE) is presented to simultaneously manipulate the coherence plane tilt of a beam containing a plurality of discrete wavelengths. The DOE is inserted into the reference arm of an off-axis dual wavelength low coherence digital holographic microscope (DHM) to provide a coherence plane tilt so that interference with the object beam generates fringes over the full detector area. The DOE maintains the propagation direction of the reference beam and thus it can be inserted in-line in existing DHM set-ups. We demonstrate full field imaging in a reflection commercial DHM with two wavelengths, 685 nm and 794 nm, resulting in an unambiguous range of 2.494 micrometers. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America