**Abstract**

We summarize a study involving simultaneous imaging of cervical cells from Pap-smear samples using bright-field and quantitative phase microscopy. The optimization approach to phase reconstruction used in our study enables full diffraction limited performance from single-shot holograms and is thus suitable for reducing cost of a quantitative phase microscope system. Over 48000 cervical cells from patient samples obtained from three clinical sites have been imaged in this study. The clinical sites used different sample preparation methodologies and the subjects represented a range of age groups and geographical diversity. Visual examination of quantitative phase images of cervical cell nuclei show distinct morphological features that we believe have not appeared in the prior literature. A PCA based analysis of numerical parameters derived from the bright-field and quantitative phase images of the cervical cells shows good separation of superficial, intermediate and abnormal cells. The distribution of phase based parameters of normal cells is also shown to be highly overlapping among different patients from the same clinical site, patients across different clinical sites and for two age groups (below and above 30 years), thus suggesting robustness and possibility of standardization of quantitative phase as an imaging modality for cell classification in future clinical usage.

**Keywords:** cervical cell imaging, quantitative phase, cell classification and characterization, early cancer diagnosis
