The topic of this dissertation is on the design and construction of miniature microscope objective optics. The design of miniature microscope objective is both similar and different from conventional microscope objective. The design and construction of two miniature microscope objectives are presented in this dissertation. The first one is a high numerical aperture (NA), water-immersion objective and it is a part of a fiber confocal reflectance microscope (FCRM). The second one is a moderate NA dry objective and it is a part of a miniature microscope array (MMA). The capability, complexity and fabrication method of the two miniature objectives are different but they both share some similar design traits as result of their miniaturization. FCRM's miniature objective has a NA of 1.0 and it is designed to operate at near infrared λ = 1,064 nm. It is 7 mm in outer diameter and 21 mm in length (measured from object plane to image plane). This kind of dimension is approximately 10 times smaller than a conventional microscope objective of similar caliber. Sub-micrometer resolution has been experimentally demonstrated with this miniature objective. MMA's miniature objective has a NA of 0.4 and it is designed to operate over the visible spectrum. It is 1.2 mm in diameter and 9.4 mm in length. The image quality of MMA's miniature objective is experimentally demonstrated to be comparable to the state-of-art commercial microscope objective.
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