Fig. 1. (a) Schematic of the microsphere-assisted high-resolved quantitative birefringence microscopy setup. (b) The detailed description of the beam propagation paths and arrangement of the optical components in the red box of (a).

Fig. 2. (a) Experimental setup of the system constructed based on Fig. 1(a). (b) Example of the AMPH captured by the experimental setup of (a). (c) Fourier spectrum of the AMPH.

Fig. 3. Example of the measured birefringence phase retardation and optic-axis orientation maps of the QWP without and with the MS in our MS-SSQBM system. (a), (b) The recovered amplitude distributions associated with two polarization states of the background and sample. (c), (d) The recovered phase distributions associated with two polarization states of the background and sample. (e), (f) The retrieved birefringence phase retardation and optic-axis orientation distributions of the background and sample images, respectively. Scale bar: 20 µm.

Fig. 4. Combination of the measured birefringence information curves of the QWP without and with the insertion of the MS in the setup for rotation angles of 0 rad to π rad.

Fig. 5. Example of holographic birefringence imaging of a birefringence resolution target without and with the insertion of an MS in the setup. (a), (b) The recovered amplitude distributions of two orthogonal polarization states of the tested resolution target without and with an MS, respectively. (c), (d) The corresponding phase distributions. (e), (f) The recovered birefringence phase retardation and optic-axis orientation distributions without and with an MS, respectively. Scale bar: 4 µm.

Fig. 6. Example of the holographic birefringence imaging of a 500 lp/mm holographic grating without and with the insertion of an MS in the setup. (a), (b) The recovered amplitude distributions of two orthogonal polarization states of the grating without and with an MS, respectively. (c), (d) The corresponding phase distributions. (e), (f) The recovered birefringence phase retardation and optic-axis orientation distributions without and with an MS, respectively. (g) The line profiles indicated by the dashed lines in (a). Scale bar: 10 µm.