From History to Microscopy

Abstract

Adaptive optics (AO) is a technology that optical designers are looking to more and more. AO can look like a magical solution: A completely blurred image can be restored to diffraction limited quality. In the beginning, this technology was developed for astronomical telescopes. It was soon transferred to vision science, and it is quickly becoming an essential technique in optical microscopy to compensate for specimen-induced optical aberrations to acquire high resolution images.