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New instrumentation and bioimaging devices are needed for viewing, understanding, and modeling key metabolic processes in living organisms such as within and among microbial cells and microbial communities in terrestrial environments, and/or multicellular plant tissues. Unique features of digital holography can be exploited to produce a new type of microscope that will be useful to biologists in studying, understanding. and modeling dynamic cellular activity in living biological systems. Digital holographic microscopy enables performing the functions of large expensive optics and precision translating devices with software operations that include machine learning and artificial intelligence to extract information more efficiently. The paper describes a project to develop an affordable, low footprint digital holographic microscope than can optically freeze a 4D space and enable microscopic study of dynamic events in a large volume at many instants of time. Thanks to recent advances in electronic imaging systems, computers, cameras, and memory, DHM holograms can now be recorded on small, lightweight, CCD or CMOS arrays at very high rates, processed in real time, and offer the many advantages associated with digital media. By transferring much of the overall optical process into electronics and software, DHM stores all optical information, transmitted and reflected from a biological volume of interest, in a hologram, enabling dynamic, microscopic imaging of the entire volume with a relatively small instrument, a capability that cannot be achieved with conventional imaging devices. The paper summarizes ongoing experiments and possibilities to analyze the hologram, directly, with machine learning techniques, avoiding the computationally costly step of reconstructing images.
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