Improvement of digital Gabor holographic microscopy using a lens in plankton studies

This work utilizes a Gabor Holographic Optical Scheme integrated with a microscope objective and a thin convex plane lens. This bi-telecentric lens system corrects spherical aberration from the objective, maintains consistent magnification across various reconstruction distances, and ensures a plane incidence on CMOS. Depending on the focal lengths of the objective and lens, the final image can be enlarged or reduced compared to the classic Gabor system, resulting in high-quality reconstructed phase images without spherical aberration. This setup was employed to capture phase distribution and intensity images of planktonic objects, such as copepods, achieving superior image quality. •The inverted bitelecentric lens system corrects for spherical aberrations in digital Gabor holographic microscopy for the first time.•This system ensures the plane of incidence on the CMOS sensor, enhancing reconstruction quality as the algorithm use a plane wave model.•This system enables the refocusing distance to match the actual physical distance, ensuring precise determination of the sample's position.