A method for characterizing a particle present in a sample, the sample lying between an image sensor and a light source and the sensor lying in a detection plane, includes illuminating the sample with the light source which emits an incident light wave propagating along a propagation axis, and acquiring an image of the sample with the sensor. The sensor is exposed to an exposure light wave. The image includes a plurality of elementary diffraction patterns each corresponding to one particle. The method also includes reconstructing a complex image representative of a complex amplitude of the light wave on a reconstruction surface passing through the sample, based on the acquired image; selecting a region of interest of the complex image corresponding to a particle of interest; forming an extracted image based on the region of interest; and characterizing the particle of interest depending on the extracted region of interest.