Light Scanning Microscope Curved Intermediate Image
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Solution Overview
Problem
Light scanning microscopes face complexity and inefficiency in their scanning optics, which must compensate for imaging errors and have limited installation space due to the small distance between conjugate pupil planes, affecting imaging quality and field illumination in nonlinear optics.
Innovation Solution
The scanning optics image a spatially curved intermediate image, allowing for simplified design without field curvature correction, and the beam deflection unit is placed in a convergent section, enabling precise wavefront manipulation and improved imaging efficiency by avoiding collimation, thus reducing the need for complex lenses and correcting transverse chromatic aberration between the scanning optics and tube lens.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If conventional scanning optics are used to generate a collimated conjugate pupil plane, then imaging quality is maintained, but the optical system becomes complex and light efficiency decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the fundamental parameter of the intermediate image from flat to spatially curved. This allows the scanning optics to work with curved wavefronts directly, eliminating the need for complex field curvature correction lenses while maintaining imaging quality. The curved intermediate image matches the natural curvature of the pupil plane, simplifying the optical path.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts and eliminates the field curvature correction function from the scanning optics system. By placing the beam deflection unit in the convergent section rather than the collimated section, the system removes the need for additional corrective lenses that would otherwise be required to flatten the intermediate image plane.
2Manufacturing precision
If conventional collimated scanning optics are used, then pupil plane conjugation is achieved, but installation space is limited due to short distance between planes
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces spatial curvature in the intermediate image plane, adding a dimensional aspect that allows the beam deflection unit to be positioned in the convergent section of the optical path. This dimensional change creates additional space for component placement while maintaining the required pupil plane conjugation through the curved wavefront propagation.
3Manufacturing precision
If beam deflection unit is placed in collimated section, then pupil plane conjugation is achieved, but wavefront manipulation precision and light efficiency decrease
Solution Approach 1:
The patent inverts the conventional arrangement by placing the beam deflection unit in the convergent section rather than the collimated section. This inversion allows the deflected beams to maintain their convergence toward the focus point, preserving light efficiency and enabling precise wavefront manipulation while still achieving the required pupil plane conjugation through the curved intermediate image.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This arrangement simplifies the scanning optics, maintains high imaging quality, and ensures stationary beam cross-sections across conjugate pupils, enhancing light efficiency and field illumination, particularly in nonlinear optics, while allowing for adaptable microscope designs.
Implementation Method 1
The scanning optics image a spatially curved intermediate image
Implementation Method 2
the beam deflection unit is placed in a convergent section, enabling precise wavefront manipulation
Implementation Method 3
the illumination beam path images at least one point of the light distribution and one point of focus onto one another
Data Source
Figure 1
Figure 2~3
Figure 4A~4B
AI summary
Light scanning microscopes often comprise a scanning optical system (35) for generating a conjugate pupil plane (PE') with respect to the pupil plane of the microscope objective, and a variably adjustable beam deflection unit (30) in the conjugate pupil plane, wherein an intermediate image (Zb1) lies between the microscope objective and the scanning optical system and the light beams are collimated in the conjugate pupil plane. Such scanning optical systems are complex and not light-efficient since they have to compensate for different imaging aberrations such as image field curvature and transverse chromatic aberrations. Moreover, on account of the small distance between the conjugate pupil plane and the scanning optical system, the structural space available for the deflection unit is small. The invention is intended to enable the use of a simpler scanning optical system and to make more structural space available. That is achieved by virtue of the fact that the scanning optical system images a second intermediate image (Zb2) into the first intermediate image via the beam deflection unit, wherein the second intermediate image is spatially curved. The deflection unit is no longer arranged in a collimated, but rather in a convergent section of the beam path. The scanning optical system, in terms of the optical properties thereof and the quality thereof, then needs to correspond merely to an eyepiece rather than to a conventional scanning objective. Non-linear microscopy.