Full-aperture extended-depth oblique plane microscopy through dynamic remote focusing

Significance

The reprojection setup typical of oblique plane microscopy (OPM) limits the effective aperture of the imaging system, and therefore its efficiency and resolution. Large aperture system is only possible through the use of custom specialized optics. A full-aperture OPM made with off the shelf components would both improve the performance of the method and encourage its widespread adoption.

Aim

To prove the feasibility of an OPM without a conventional reprojection setup, retaining the full aperture of the primary objective employed.

Approach

A deformable lens based remote focusing setup synchronized with the rolling shutter of a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor detector is used instead of a traditional reprojection system.

Results

The system was tested on microbeads, prepared slides, and zebrafish embryos. Resolution and pixel throughput were superior to conventional OPM with cropped apertures, and comparable with OPM implementations with custom made optical components.

Conclusions

An easily reproducible approach to OPM imaging is presented, eliminating the conventional reprojection setup and exploiting the full aperture of the employed objective.

Large field of view aberrations correction with deformable lenses and multi conjugate adaptive optics

Optical microscopes can have limited resolution due to aberrations caused by samples and sample holders. Using deformable mirrors and wavefront sensorless optimization algorithms can correct these aberrations, but the correction is limited to a small area of the field of view. This study presents an adaptive optics method that uses a series of plug-and-play deformable lenses for large field of view wavefront correction. A direct wavefront measurement method using the spinning sub-pupil aberration measurement technique is combined with correction based on the deformable lenses. Experimental results using fluorescence microscopy with a wide field and a light sheet fluorescence microscope show that the proposed method can achieve detection and correction over an extended field of view with a compact transmissive module placed in the detection path of the microscope. This method could improve the resolution and accuracy of imaging in a variety of fields, including biology and materials science.