Optical path difference microscopy with a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor
H. Gong (TU Delft - Team Raf Van de Plas)
Temitope E. Agbana (TU Delft - Team Raf Van de Plas)
P. Pozzi (TU Delft - Team Raf Van de Plas)
OA Soloviev (TU Delft - Team Raf Van de Plas, Flexible Optical B.V., ITMO University)
M.H.G. Verhaegen (TU Delft - Team Raf Van de Plas)
Gleb Vdovin (Flexible Optical B.V., ITMO University, TU Delft - Team Raf Van de Plas)
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Abstract
In this Letter, we show that a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor can be used for the quantitative measurement of the specimen optical path difference (OPD) in an ordinary incoherent optical microscope, if the spatial coherence of the illumination light in the plane of the specimen is larger than the microscope resolution. To satisfy this condition, the illumination numerical aperture should be smaller than the numerical aperture of the imaging lens. This principle has been successfully applied to build a high-resolution reference-free instrument for the characterization of the OPD of micro-optical components and microscopic biological samples.