Towards Clearer Imaging of Luminescent and Bioluminescent Samples : Increasing Background Rejection in Luminescent and Bioluminescent Imaging Using Optical and Computational Techniques

Bioluminescence has become an excellent method for tagging and easily identifying biochemical processes. The process produces light from a set of biochemical reactions such that a light source is not needed and imaging can be done in regions a light source could not easily be placed. Also larger samples do not require any scanning, as other techniques like both confocal and two-photon. The major issue with the technique is that because it does not require illumination, the resulting images are usually blurry and poorly sectioned. In this thesis a series of optical and computational techniques are used to take advantage of the propagation of phase rather than intensity to reject significantly more light from out-side the focal region.