In Optics Express we describe a simple, practical application of the Deformable Phase Plate: a miniaturized fluorescence microscope with full adaptive optics and nothing folded in it — as far as we know, the smallest adaptive-optics microscope built to date.

What is in it

The instrument combines a refractive, ultra-thin DPP with a sensorless wavefront-estimation algorithm: the aberration is estimated from the image itself, so there is no wavefront sensor and no beam split off to feed one. On synthesized samples it delivers diffraction-limited imaging in a fully refractive AO microscope.

Replacing the conventional deformable mirror with a DPP removes the fold in the beam path and the relay optics around it, and with them the system redesign that adaptive optics usually demands — while keeping the higher-order aberration correction that makes it worth having.

A post by Nikon Instruments sharing the paper, with the instrument schematic: the beam path from laser through objective and relay lenses to the DPP and camera, the DPP top view with its 20 mm membrane and 9 mm clear aperture, and a photograph of the assembled microscope beside a coin for scale.

The paper is open access:

Original article: “Fully refractive adaptive optics fluorescence microscope using an optofluidic wavefront modulator” https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.387734