Development and Assessment of Multiple Illumination Color Fourier Ptychographic Microscopy for High Throughput Sample Digitization

In this study, we proposed a multiplexed color illumination strategy to improve the data acquisition efficiency of Fourier ptychography microscopy (FPM). Instead of sequentially lighting up one single channel LED, our method turns on multiple white light LEDs for each image acquisition via a color camera. Thus, each raw image contains multiplexed spectral information. An FPM prototype was developed, which was equipped with a 4x/0.13 NA objective lens to achieve a spatial resolution equivalent to that of a 20x/0.4 NA objective lens. Both two- and four-LED illumination patterns were designed and applied during the experiments. A USAF 1951 resolution target was first imaged under these illumination conditions, based on which MTF curves were generated to assess the corresponding imaging performance. Next, H&E tissue samples and analyzable metaphase chromosome cells were used to evaluate the clinical utility of our strategy. The results show that the single and multiplexed (two- or four-LED) illumination results achieved comparable imaging performance on all the three channels of the MTF curves. Meanwhile, the reconstructed tissue or cell images successfully retain the definition of cell nuclei and cytoplasm and can better preserve the cell edges as compared to the results from the conventional microscopes. This study initially validates the feasibility of multiplexed color illumination for the future development of high-throughput FPM scanning systems.