ApertureAPI — Public API Guide

ApertureAPI reconstructs digital holograms into quantitative phase and height data over HTTP. Send a hologram image and its optical parameters; receive a ZIP of results.

• API base: https://api.apertureapi.com
• This guide: https://api.apertureapi.com/docs
• Interactive API reference: https://api.apertureapi.com/docs/api (always authoritative — generated from the running service)
• Service status: GET https://api.apertureapi.com/health

New here? Do this first

Open Getting started — a five-minute walkthrough that downloads a sample hologram, reconstructs it, and shows you how to read the result. You need nothing installed and no account.

Pages, in reading order

1. Getting started — your first reconstruction in five minutes, with a sample file, your own parameters, and how to read the result.

For labs

2. For optical computing groups — a recorded baseline to compare your own methods and hardware against.
3. For biomedical QPI labs — continuity and a record per phase map (research use only).
4. For holography and interferometry labs — frame to methods citation, step by step.
5. For industrial QA and metrology — a lab-side comparison against your own reference measurement.
6. For core facilities — a one-page referral sheet.
7. Teaching module — a 60–90 minute graduate lab session.
8. Design partnership — the fixed-fee, 90-day engagement on your rig.
9. Workflow fit — five questions, three verdicts.
10. Validation docket — what is measured, what is not, and the limits.
11. Reproducibility bundle — rerun a real request and check the IDs.
12. Methods supplement — how to cite a reconstruction.
13. Procurement — data handling, security, subprocessors, and what is not offered.

Reference

14. Quickstart — the exact commands: browser, command line, Python, account.
15. Authentication & signup — getting an API key (free 3-month trial).
16. What you get back — every file in the result ZIP.
17. Errors — what each status code means and what to do.
18. Tier & rate limits — what each level allows.
19. Pricing — plans and pay-as-you-go.
20. Free validation — how the bounded free validation runs, and what follows it.
21. Use cases — who this is for and what a validation looks like.
22. Verified facts — what we claim, and the committed artifact behind each.
23. Community and listings — where we list this project.
24. Health check — liveness.

Help

Email system@apertureapi.com with the page name and what you tried. Include the evidence_report_id from pdhm_metadata.json if you have a result — it lets us find your exact run.

What we do not claim

We do not claim measurement accuracy. Absolute height accuracy, per-pixel uncertainty and repeatability are reported as not-yet-established in our own result reports, and the traceability field is false. That is deliberate and it is in writing in every report we produce. What every result does carry is a record of exactly which input, settings and software build produced it, which anyone can check. Run-to-run output reproducibility is not yet established on the in-line path; see the validation docket.