Abstract
We examined the point spread function of the polarized light field microscope and established a computational framework to solve the forward problem in polarized light field imaging, for the purpose of furthering its use as a quantitative tool for measuring three-dimensional maps of the birefringence of transparent objects. We recorded experimental polarized light field images of small calcite crystals and of larger birefringent objects and compared our experimental results to numerical simulations based on polarized light ray tracing. We find good agreement between all our experiments and simulations, which leads us to propose polarized light ray tracing as one solution to the forward problem for the complex, nonlinear imaging mode of the polarized light field microscope. Solutions to the ill-posed inverse problem might be found in analytical methods and/or deep learning approaches that are based on training data generated by the forward solution presented here.