Microscope image reconstruction

In brightfield, phase-contrast or polarization microscopy, the image can be modeled by using scattering theory. The object, consisting of spatial variations in complex refractive index, scatters components of an angular spectrum of plane waves, and the image calculated by integration over incident and scattered waves. This approach takes into account the high aperture effects, important in microscope imaging. Rigorous methods can be used to calculate the scattering by the object.1 However, these methods, in addition to being in general very computationally intensive, result in the disadvantges that it is difficult to see trends in the behaviour and usually impracticable to reconstruct the object from the image data.