Adaptive optical microscopy: the ongoing quest for a perfect image | Light: Science & Applications
Adaptive optics is used to improve image quality across a wide range of microscopy techniques. Martin Booth from the University of Oxford in the UK reviews how technologies such as deformable mirrors and spatial light modulators, which compensate for aberrations by locally controlling the wavefront of a light wave, are now improving the performance of multiphoton, confocal, widefield and super-resolution microscopes. The benefits of such improvements are especially appealing for images captured from within biological tissue (focal distances of tens to hundreds of micrometres), where low-order aberrations associated with smooth phase variations occur. One future challenge is the development of efficient measurement and correction schemes for higher-order phase variations.
Introduction Optical microscopes have for a long time played a vital role in biomedical research. Their ability to provide multidimensional structural and functional information about a specimen in a non-invasive manner has permitted numerous scientific advances. These microscopes rely upon high-quality optical systems to operate at the optimum resolution, which is determined by the diffraction limit of light for conventional microscopes. However, even with perfect optical components, the performance of the microscope is affected by the optical properties of the specimen. Spatial variations…
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