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Significance:
Digital holographic microscopy is widely used to get the quantitative phase information of transparent cells.
Aim:
However, the sample phase is superimposed with aberrations. To quantify the phase information, aberrations need to be fully compensated.
Approach:
We propose a technique to obtain aberration-free phase imaging, using the derivative-based principal component analysis (dPCA).
Results:
With dPCA, almost all aberrations can be extracted and compensated without requirements on background segmentation, making it efficient and convenient.
Conclusions:
It solves the problem that the conventional principal component analysis (PCA) algorithm cannot compensate the common but intricate higher order cross-term aberrations, such as astigmatism and coma. Moreover, the dPCA strategy proposed here is not only suitable for aberration compensation but also applicable for other cases where there exist cross-terms that cannot be analyzed with the PCA algorithm.