In this talk, we provide an overview of the basic principle, research fields, and representative applications of TIE, focusing particularly on optical imaging, metrology, and microscopy. In particular, we present a new type of label-free three-dimensional (3D) microscopy technique, termed transport of intensity diffraction tomography (TIDT). Without resorting to interferometric detection, TIDT-NSA retrieves the 3D refractive index (RI) distribution of biological specimens from 3D intensity-only measurements based on off-the-shelf bright-field microscope hardware, allowing incoherent-diffraction-limited quantitative 3D phase-contrast imaging. These results highlight a new era in which strict coherence and interferometry are no longer prerequisites for quantitative phase imaging and diffraction tomography, paving the way toward a new generation of label-free three-dimensional microscopy, with applications in all branches of biomedicine.
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