Jonathan Petruccelli, SUNY Albany

In imaging applications using visible light and X-rays, information is obtained by measuring electromagnetic waves after they interact with a sample. The sample imparts information in both the wave’s amplitude (which changes due to absorption or scattering within the sample) and phase (a delay of the wave’s oscillation due to sample thickness). Because of the rate of oscillation of the fields in visible light and X-ray imaging (upwards of 1014 Hz), detectors necessarily measure the time-averaged wave over many cycles and therefore cannot directly measure phase. However, in many cases of interest, e.g. transparent objects when using visible light or low density materials when using X rays, phase contains more information than attenuation and can, for example, be used to make otherwise invisible features visible. I will present some readily implemented techniques that use the physics of wave propagation to render phase measurable detectors and will present