Lensfree super-resolution holographic microscopy using wetting films on a chip

We investigate the use of wetting films to significantly improve the imaging performance of lensfree pixel super-resolution on-chip microscopy, achieving < 1 µm spatial resolution over a large imaging area of ~24 mm(2). Formation of an ultra-thin wetting film over the specimen effectively creates a micro-lens effect over each object, which significantly improves the signal-to-noise-ratio and therefore the resolution of our lensfree images. We validate the performance of this approach through lensfree on-chip imaging of various objects having fine morphological features (with dimensions of e.g., ≤0.5 µm) such as Escherichia coli (E. coli), human sperm, Giardia lamblia trophozoites, polystyrene micro beads as well as red blood cells. These results are especially important for the development of highly sensitive field-portable microscopic analysis tools for resource limited settings.