3-DIMENSIONAL IMAGES GENERATED BY QUADRATURE INTERFEROMETRY

Quadrature detection techniques have been applied to images obtained f rom a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with differently polarized beams to yield the real and the imaginary parts of the diffracted fields simult aneously. This approach eliminates the need for phase retrieval by pro viding complete information on the complex amplitude of the diffracted signal. We present results in which we demonstrate our ability to rec onstruct two-and three-dimensional microscopic objects from their comp lex diffraction patterns. (C) 1998 Optical Society of America.