Fast Focal Point Correction in Prism-Coupled Total Internal Reflection Scanning Imager Using an Electronically Tunable Lens

Total internal reflection (TIR) is useful for interrogating physical and chemical processes that occur at the interface between two transparent media. Yet prism-coupled TIR imaging microscopes suffer from limited sensing areas due to the fact that the interface (the object plane) is not perpendicula...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2018-02, Vol.18 (2), p.524
Main Authors: Zhu, Chenggang, Ge, Bilin, Chen, Ru, Zhu, Xiangdong, Mi, Lan, Ma, Jiong, Wang, Xu, Zheng, Fengyun, Fei, Yiyan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Background noise
Chemical reactions
electronically tunable lens
focal point correction
Geometry
Image acquisition
label-free optical biosensors
Noise
Organic chemistry
protein microarray
Proteins
Sensors
total internal reflection
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Summary:Total internal reflection (TIR) is useful for interrogating physical and chemical processes that occur at the interface between two transparent media. Yet prism-coupled TIR imaging microscopes suffer from limited sensing areas due to the fact that the interface (the object plane) is not perpendicular to the optical axis of the microscope. In this paper, we show that an electrically tunable lens can be used to rapidly and reproducibly correct the focal length of an oblique-incidence scanning microscope (OI-RD) in a prism-coupled TIR geometry. We demonstrate the performance of such a correction by acquiring an image of a protein microarray over a scan area of 4 cm² with an effective resolution of less than 20 microns. The electronic focal length tuning eliminates the mechanical movement of the illumination lens in the scanning microscope and in turn the noise and background drift associated with the motion.
ISSN:1424-8220
1424-8220
DOI:10.3390/s18020524