In this Letter, we show that a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor can be used for the quantitative measurement of the specimen optical path difference (OPD) in an ordinary incoherent optical microscope, if the spatial coherence of the illumination light in the plane of the specimen is larger than the microscope resolution. To satisfy this condition, the illumination numerical aperture should be smaller than the numerical aperture of the imaging lens. This principle has been successfully applied to build a high-resolution reference-free instrument for the characterization of the OPD of micro-optical components and microscopic biological samples.

We present an effective method to extend the mode-hop-free (MHF) tuning range of an external-cavity diode laser (ECDL) by synchronous tuning of the longitudinal modes of the external cavity and the internal cavity, with the mode also matched in the initial state. Both the principle of synchronous tuning and the condition of mode matching in a Littman-configuration ECDL are introduced. The necessary tuning parameters could simply be estimated by the output power curve of the tuning with a single photodiode. By using this tuning method, we increased the MHF tuning range of an ECDL with a nonoptimized reflector pivot position from several gigahertzes to over 78 GHz around 774.5 nm. The tuning performance of the ECDL could meet the requirement of frequency scanned interferometry.

We present a structured illumination microscopy system that projects a hexagonal pattern by the interference among three coherent beams, suitable for implementation in a light-sheet geometry. Seven images acquired as the illumination pattern is shifted laterally can be processed to produce a super-resolved image that surpasses the diffraction-limited resolution by a factor of over 2 in an exemplar light-sheet arrangement. Three methods of processing data are discussed depending on whether the raw images are available in groups of seven, individually in a stream or as a larger batch representing a three-dimensional stack. We show that imaging axially moving samples can introduce artefacts, visible as fine structures in the processed images. However, these artefacts are easily removed by a filtering operation carried out as part of the batch processing algorithm for three-dimensional stacks. The reconstruction algorithms implemented in Python include specific optimizations for calculation on a graphics processing unit and we demonstrate its operation on experimental data of static objects and on simulated data of moving objects. We show that the software can process over 239 input raw frames per second at 512 × 512 pixels, generating over 34 super-resolved frames per second at 1024 × 1024 pixels. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue ‘Super-resolution structured illumination microscopy (part 1)’.

We have experimentally demonstrated a lensless coherent microscope based on direct registration of the complex optical field by sampling the pupil with a sequence of two-point interferometers formed by the digital micromirror device. Complete registration of the complex amplitude in the pupil of imaging system, without any reference beam, provides a convenient link between the experimental and computational optics. Unlike other approaches to digital holography, our method does not require any external reference beam, resulting in a simple and robust registration setup. Computer analysis of the experimentally registered field allows for focusing the image in the whole range from zero to infinity, and for virtual correction of the aberrations present in the real optical system, by applying the adaptive wavefront corrections to its virtual model.

In the past decade, underwater spectral imaging (USI) has shown great potential in underwater exploration for its high spectral and spatial resolution. This proposal presents a stare-type USI system combined with the liquid crystal tunable filter (LCTF) spectral splitting device. Considering the working features of LCTF and the theoretical model of USI, the core structure containing “imaging lens-LCTF-imaging sensor” is designed and developed. The system is compact, and the optical geometry is constructed minimally. The spectral calibration test analysis proved that the spectral response range of the system covers a full band of 400 nm to 700 nm with the highest spectral resolution between 6.7 nm and 18.5 nm. The experiments show that the system can quickly collect high-quality spectral image data by switching between different spectral bands arbitrarily. The designed prototype provides a feasible and reliable spectral imaging solution for in situ underwater targets observation with high spectrum collecting efficiency.