Abstract

In normal operation with a dry or oil immersion microscope objective there is an index mismatch with a water-based biological sample. This index mismatch causes a depth dependant spherical aberration that severely limits the range that a sample can be imaged along the optical axis.¹ We have previously demonstrated the use of a membrane deformable mirror to correct for off-axis aberrations in a confocal microscopy system.² In this study we apply a genetic learning algorithm in conjunction with third harmonic generation to determine the appropriate shape of the deformable mirror to correct for aberrations in longitudinal depth scanning in a confocal microscope (Fig. 1).

© 2001 Optical Society of America