Enhancing lensless imaging through Fisher‑information‑engineered structured scattering

Single-shot lensless imaging is fundamentally limited by the Fisher information carried to the detector. Here, we demonstrate a simple way to increase this information by enhancing the scattered field using a high-spatial-frequency amplitude mask placed after a laser-illuminated object. This added modulation produces greater structured scattering and increases the per-photon Fisher information of the measurement. Using fungal spores as a test case, the grid-enhanced configuration yields richer diffraction signatures and higher Fisher information compared to the unmodulated case, with most samples above unity. Under identical training conditions, a neural network trained on grid-modulated data produces reconstructions that more closely match ground-truth microscope images. Saliency analysis shows that Fisher information-enhanced scattering allows the model to focus on first-order diffraction-ring features, improving both interpretability and stability. These results demonstrate that Fisher information-engineered structured scattering, implemented using a low-cost static mask, provides a general and hardware-efficient route to more informative and interpretable lensless imaging for computational microscopy and compact sensing systems.