Patent ID: 8687253

Claim:
A method for reducing speckle noise in an image of an object, comprising: generating a object beam and a reference beam with a coherent radiation source; placing the object at a first position along a beam path of the object beam and exposing the object to the object beam at the first position, recording a first holographic image formed by interference between the object beam being modulated by the object located at the first position and the reference beam not modulated by the object; moving the object in a longitudinal direction along the beam path of the object beam from the first position to a second position different than the first position and exposing the object with the object beam at the second position; recording a second holographic image formed by interference between the object beam modulated by the object located at the second position and the reference beam not modulated by the object; reconstructing a first E-field image from the first holographic image recorded at the first position, and reconstructing a second E-field image from the second holographic image recorded at the second position, and generating an object image by averaging the first E-field image and the second E-field image, wherein the step of generating the object image includes performing a numerical focus calculation of at least one of the first E-field image or the second E-field image.