Correlation plenoptic imaging for microscopy applications

Plenoptic microscopy is a promising technique which allows refocusing and depth-of-field enhancement, in post-processing, as well as scanning free 3D imaging. However, in its conventional implementation, spatial resolution is highly sacrificed and cannot reach the diffraction limit set by the numerical aperture of the imaging system. We recently proposed a novel method, named Correlation Plenoptic Imaging (CPI), based on measuring intensity correlation of either chaotic or entangled photon light sources. However, such protocols are not well suited for microscopic purposes: they cannot be employed with scattering or fluorescent samples and are extremely sensitive to diffusive effects. Here we consider and compare novel CPI protocols which overcome these problems and enable to perform plenoptic microscopy at the diffraction limit for generic samples; we present both theory and simulations, discuss the improved robustness with respect to previous protocols against turbulence around the sample, and highlight the physical limits of the proposed technique.