Physical Optics and Advanced Imaging

The first half of the course will cover Fourier basic principles, wave propagation, and their application and connection to physical optics and to coherent and incoherent imaging techniques. With special emphasis on the relation of Fourier principles with imaging and including optical systems response and detector sampling.

 

The second half of the course will be devoted to exploring advanced imaging techniques. With particular focus on computed imaging such as holography, coherent diffractive imaging, and tomography, with mathematical depth and emphasis on the inversion strategies.

 

The course will include a visit to the large-scale facilities of the Paul Scherrer Institute in order to get first hand impression of instrumentation and applications. Additionally for the course we will have 3 invited external lecturers who are experts in application or development of advanced imaging techniques. Confirmed lecturers are Prof. Andreas Schaefer (Sensory Circuits and Neurotechnology Laboratory, The Francis Crick Institute, UK), Dr. Claire Donnelly (Three-dimensional magnetic systems, Max Planck Institute, Germany), and Dr. Ana Diaz (Coherent X-ray Scattering, Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland).

 

As a final project the students will choose one computational imaging topic, related to one scientific publication, which they will explore in depth. They will develop a simple experiment if feasible, or numerical simulation, and attempt to reproduce the main results. Alternatively the student can bring a problem from their research topic. For examination the students will present a written report on their work and give an oral presentation.

 

Expected student activities:
Participation in class and discussion
Exercises
Bibliographic research

 

Assessment methods:
Written report and presentation