Psf Engineering Application Note

Overview: With the recent award of the Nobel Prize to Betzig and Moerner there has been a significant increase in awareness of point spread function (PSF) engineering. In this case the SLM is placed in the emission arm of a microscope. Moerner demonstrated use of PSF engineering with a Meadowlark Optics SLM for super-resolution imaging and 3D localization of fluorescence emitters. PSF engineering has been demonstrated to enable a microscope to image a sample using multiple imaging modalities simultaneously change between modalities non-mechanically. This allows for imaging of structures with a weak refractive index, and for quantitative measurement of phase structures. Imaging modalities that have been demonstrated include: spiral phase imaging, dark field imaging, phase contrast imaging, differential interference contrast imaging, and extended depth of field imaging.