Blind Ptychographic Phase Retrieval via Convergent Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers

Ptychography has risen as a reference X-ray imaging technique: it achieves resolutions of one billionth of a meter, macroscopic field of view, or the capability to retrieve chemical or magnetic contrast, among other features. A ptychographyic reconstruction is normally formulated as a blind phase retrieval problem, where both the image (sample) and the probe (illumination) have to be recovered from phaseless measured data. In this article we address a nonlinear least squares model for the blind ptychography problem with constraints on the image and the probe by maximum likelihood estimation of the Poisson noise model. We formulate a variant model that incorporates the information of phaseless measurements of the probe to eliminate possible artifacts. Next, we propose a generalized alternating direction method of multipliers designed for the proposed nonconvex models with convergence guarantee under mild conditions, where their subproblems can be solved by fast element-wise operations. Numerically, the proposed algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms in both speed and image quality.Comment: 23 page

Partially Coherent Ptychography by Gradient Decomposition of the Probe

Coherent ptychographic imaging experiments often discard over 99.9 % of the flux from a light source to define the coherence of an illumination. Even when coherent flux is sufficient, the stability required during an exposure is another important limiting factor. Partial coherence analysis can considerably reduce these limitations. A partially coherent illumination can often be written as the superposition of a single coherent illumination convolved with a separable translational kernel. In this paper we propose the Gradient Decomposition of the Probe (GDP), a model that exploits translational kernel separability, coupling the variances of the kernel with the transverse coherence. We describe an efficient first-order splitting algorithm GDP-ADMM to solve the proposed nonlinear optimization problem. Numerical experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method with Gaussian and binary kernel functions in fly-scan measurements. Remarkably, GDP-ADMM produces satisfactory results even when the ratio between kernel width and beam size is more than one, or when the distance between successive acquisitions is twice as large as the beam width.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figure

Shaping Coherent X-rays with Binary Optics

Diffractive lenses fabricated by lithographic methods are one of the most popular image forming optics in the x-ray regime. Most commonly, binary diffractive optics, such as Fresnel zone plates are used due to their ability to focus at high resolution and to manipulate the x-ray wavefront. We report here a binary zone plate design strategy to form arbitrary illuminations for coherent multiplexing, structured illumination, and wavefront shaping experiments. Given a desired illumination, we adjust the duty cycle, harmonic order, and zone placement to vary both the amplitude and phase of the wavefront at the lens. This enables the binary lithographic pattern to generate arbitrary structured illumination optimized for a variety of applications such as holography, interferometry, ptychography, imaging, and others.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Phase retrieval and saddle-point optimization

Iterative algorithms with feedback are amongst the most powerful and versatile optimization methods for phase retrieval. Among these, the hybrid input-output algorithm has demonstrated practical solutions to giga-element nonlinear phase retrieval problems, escaping local minima and producing images at resolutions beyond the capabilities of lens-based optical methods. Here, the input-output iteration is improved by a lower dimensional subspace saddle-point optimization.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, revte

Iterative Joint Ptychography-Tomography with Total Variation Regularization

In order to determine the 3D structure of a thick sample, researchers have recently combined ptychography (for high resolution) and tomography (for 3D imaging) in a single experiment. 2-step methods are usually adopted for reconstruction, where the ptychography and tomography problems are often solved independently. In this paper, we provide a novel model and ADMM-based algorithm to jointly solve the ptychography-tomography problem iteratively, also employing total variation regularization. The proposed method permits large scan stepsizes for the ptychography experiment, requiring less measurements and being more robust to noise with respect to other strategies, while achieving higher reconstruction quality results.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Analyzer Free Linear Dichroic Ptychography

Linear-dichroism is an important tool to characterize the transmission matrix and determine the crystal or orbital orientation in a material. In order to gain high resolution mapping of the transmission properties of such materials, we introduce the linear-dichroism scattering model in ptychographic imaging, and then develop an efficient two-stage reconstruction algorithm. Using proposed algorithm, the dichroic transmission matrix without an analyzer can be recovered by using ptychography measurements with as few as three different polarization angles, with the help of an empty region to remove phase ambiguities.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure