Low-Cost Continuous-Wave Diffusive Microtomography with Fiber-Scanned White-Light Illumination

Alexander Ingold

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arXiv · 2606.25183

Low-Cost Continuous-Wave Diffusive Microtomography with Fiber-Scanned White-Light Illumination

Alexander Ingold

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Abstract

Tomographic microscopy enables three-dimensional internal imaging but often requires expensive optical or X-ray instrumentation. Here we present an ultra-low-cost continuous-wave diffusive tomography (CWDT) system for biological samples. The system uses a smartphone microscope, a white LED coupled into an optical fiber, 3D-printed micropositioners, and a physics-based forward model optimized with machine learning. We demonstrate full-color volumetric reconstructions from a tartrazine-cleared poplar section, a scattering phantom, fungal mycelium near an Arabidopsis root, and thick poplar branch imaging with an inserted side-emitting fiber. The current results are qualitative and exploratory, but they show that scanned fiber illumination and inexpensive hardware can produce useful three-dimensional reconstruction outputs for low-cost microscopy experiments.

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Alexander Ingold. 2026-06-23. Low-Cost Continuous-Wave Diffusive Microtomography with Fiber-Scanned White-Light Illumination. https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.25183

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