System calibration of diffraction tomography with integrated aberration and illumination position correction

Multi-slice beam propagation (MSBP) enables intensity-based diffraction tomography (DT) for quantitative refractive index (RI) reconstruction of unlabeled samples. However, in long-term live-cell observation, MSBP is particularly vulnerable to optical aberrations and illumination angle deviations, which can substantially degrade reconstruction accuracy. To address these issues, we propose adaptive calibration for diffraction tomography (AC-DT), a system calibration framework built upon the MSBP model. This approach corrects aberrations and illumination direction deviations using intensity images captured from multiple angles, enabling accurate reconstruction of the 3D RI distribution of the sample. Simulations and biological experiments demonstrate that the AC-DT method effectively suppresses error propagation and artifact amplification caused by systematic errors during 3D reconstruction. This work presents an adaptive calibration technique based on MSBP that is applicable to multiple-scattering scenarios and provides a robust solution for high-resolution, label-free live-cell imaging.