Paper
26 June 2017 On-axis programmable microscope using liquid crystal spatial light modulator
Author Affiliations +
Abstract
Spatial light modulators (SLM) are currently used in many applications in optical microscopy and imaging. One of the most promising methods is the use of liquid crystal displays (LCD) as programmable phase diffractive optical elements (DOE) placed in the Fourier plane giving access to the spatial frequencies which can be phased shifted individually, allowing to emulate a wealth of contrast enhancing methods for both amplitude and phase samples. We use phase and polarization modulation of LCD to implement an on-axis microscope optical system. The LCD used are Hamamatsu liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) SLM free of flicker, thus showing a full profit of the SLM space bandwidth, as opposed to optical systems in the literature forced to work off-axis due to the strong zero-order component. Taking benefits of the phase modulation of the LCOS we have implemented different microscopic imaging operations, such as high-pass and low-pass filtering in parallel using programmable blazed gratings. Moreover, we are able to control polarization modulation to display two orthogonal linear state of polarization images than can be subtracted or added by changing the period of the blazed grating. In that sense, Differential Interference Contrast (DIC) microscopy can be easily done by generating two images exploiting the polarization splitting properties when a blazed grating is displayed in the SLM. Biological microscopy samples are also used.
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Pascuala García-Martínez, José Luís Martínez, and Ignacio Moreno "On-axis programmable microscope using liquid crystal spatial light modulator", Proc. SPIE 10333, Optical Methods for Inspection, Characterization, and Imaging of Biomaterials III, 103330Q (26 June 2017); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2269760
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KEYWORDS
Spatial light modulators

LCDs

Microscopes

Polarization

Liquid crystal on silicon

Liquid crystals

Diffractive optical elements

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