Physical Sciences Inc. SBIR Phase II Award, August 2019

Physical Sciences Inc. will develop a Tomographic Digital Holographic Microscope with integrated Infrared spectromicroscopy (T-DHM/IR) to enable time resolved correlation of chemical and 3D structural properties of biological warfare agents (BWAs), microorganisms and infected human tissue. The T-DHM/IR uses a precision hexapod stage and a custom reflective microscope objective with NA = 0.83 to perform simultaneous holographic imaging and wide field IR spectroscopy. 3D tomographic reconstructions are generated by rapidly acquiring holographic projections over a range of angles actuated by the hexapod stage; in this mode, the sensor will achieve diffraction-limited native lateral/axial resolutions of 240 nm/290 nm, respectively in < 9 s. Super resolution techniques applied to the T-DHM images will achieve practical lateral/axial resolutions of 120 nm/145 nm. The microscope also integrates a nearfield scanning optical microscopy approach to achieve sub-micron resolution in the IR spectroscopic channel registered to the T-DHM images. Under the Phase II effort, an advanced, ruggedized prototype, including software, will be developed and tested. The T-DHM/IR’s capabilities will be benchmarked though studies of BWA simulants and environmental contaminants. It will also be used to advance reagent-free field testing for plasmodium and spirochete infections that cause malaria and Lyme’s disease, respectively.