Computational signal-to-noise ratio analysis for optical quadrature microscopy

Optical quadrature microscopy (OQM) was invented in 1997 to reconstruct a full-field image of quantitative phase, and has been used to count the number of cells in live mouse embryos. Here we present a thorough SNR analysis that incorporates noise terms for fluctuations in the laser, aberrations within the individual paths of the Mach-Zehnder interferometer, and imperfections within the beamsplitters and CCD cameras to create a model for the resultant phase measurements. The current RMS error of the OQM phase images has been calculated to be 0.08 radians from substituting images from the instrumentation into the model.