Optimization of sensing parameters for a confocal signal-based wavefront corrector in microscopy

摘要

The accuracy of a confocal signal-based wavefront corrector depends on several parameters such as spatial variation of optical properties within the specimen, aberration magnitude and composition, time required for the correction, etc. Here, a numerical analysis has been performed with the aim to improve system performance. The goal of the search algorithm in a confocal signal-based wavefront corrector is to estimate the Zernike coefficients of the aberrations. High-magnitude aberrations show low Strehl ratios. Repeating the correction process results in higher Strehl ratios, but at the cost of increased time. An in-focus on-axis specimen results in higher Strehl ratio compared to an out-of-focus and off-optical-axis specimen. For all cases, the wavefront correction accuracy is better, when the diameter of the pinhole is chosen to be equal to that of the Airy disk. The lower limit on the pinhole size for detecting small magnitude aberrations is set by noise.