A pupil-plane corrector sharpens one region of the field: the isoplanatic patch, across which the aberration is effectively constant. Everywhere else its correction is the wrong one. In Applied Optics we present a way around that limit that needs no second corrector — numerical field segmentation.
One modulator, the whole field
The method divides the field of view into sub-regions, finds the correction for each with a sensorless estimation algorithm — from the image, without a wavefront sensor — and stitches the corrected segments into one image. It is an alternative both to conjugate AO, which needs a wavefront modulator for every aberrating layer, and to standard pupil AO with its limited correctable area: in principle the correctable area of any pupil-AO system can be extended to the entire field with a single modulator at the pupil plane.
With a compact, easy-to-integrate Deformable Phase Plate as that modulator, we expect the method to open new applications in adaptive-optics microscopy and to raise the throughput of optical inspection.
The paper is in OSA’s Applied Optics:
Original publication: “Extended field-of-view adaptive optics in microscopy via numerical field segmentation” https://doi.org/10.1364/AO.388000
