Abstract
Confocal scanning imaging technique is attractive for various microscopic imaging applications due to its superior resolution, rejection of scattered light, and depth discrimination [1-3]. This method attracted special interest in such applications as imaging biological and semiconductor materials, where high definition in both the transverse and longitudinal dimensions is required. The unique property of the depth discrimination enables the confocal microscope to measure the depth image of a 3-D object by moving different parts of the object transversally and longitudinally into the focal region. The precision of the depth measurement depends on the depth Point-Spread-Function (PSF) of the confocal imaging system as well as the depth resolution of the depth scanning device. To achieve high depth resolution, most of the existing confocal imaging systems use a high precision and very stable mechanical scanning methods. In contrast, chromatic confocal microscope alleviates the requirement of the mechanical depth scanning by employing a broadband light source (e.g., white light source) and a dispersive objective lens for wavelength-depth coding [2-4]. With this method different spectral components of the source are focused onto different depth planes of the object, and the measured output power spectrum is directly translated into the depth information of the object. Furthermore, the chromatic confocal microscope can perform parallel depth measurements when the output power spectrum components are detected and analyzed in parallel.
© 1996 Optical Society of America
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