English

Dynamic Coherent Diffractive Imaging Using Only a Support Constraint in the Complex Plane

Optics 2026-05-26 v1

Abstract

We show that a bounded temporal increment prior on the sample dynamics is sufficient to reconstruct a time-varying phase object from a near-field diffraction movie, under the thin-film approximation. The time evolution of the field is parameterized by a multiplicative inter-frame update factor, and a bound on its complex-plane support enforces a bounded phase increment and a passive amplitude constraint. Reconstruction of the dynamic field is thereby converted into a feasibility problem with two projection operators: a measurement-domain modulus projection and an object-domain circular-sector projection. We validate the approach experimentally using a spatial light modulator as a calibrated dynamic sample in two cases: a reaction--diffusion phase pattern with spatially expanding extent, and a growing phase pattern whose accumulated phase reaches 10π10\pi. In both cases the reconstructed phase trajectory agrees well with the ground truth. We then apply the same framework, without modification, to in-situ monitoring of a photo-polymer 3D printing process, recovering the spatiotemporal phase induced by polymerization under a spatially patterned blue light. The reconstructed phase trajectory provides an observable for photo-chemical system identification and process control.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.24250,
  title  = {Dynamic Coherent Diffractive Imaging Using Only a Support Constraint in the Complex Plane},
  author = {Yaocheng Tian and Taichi Tsuchiya and Yu-chen Karen Chen-Wiegart and Horacio D. Espinosa and Yuichiro Kunai and George Barbastathis},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.24250},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

11 pages, 8 figures, submitting to Optica