2022-07-29 –, Red
Various ways of calculating three-dimensional optical point spread functions (PSFs) are presented. The methods account for the vector nature of the optical field as well as phase aberrations. Quantitative comparisons in terms of speed and accuracy will be presented.
Methods of calculating optical point spread functions (PSFs) calculated by the toolbox https://github.com/RainerHeintzmann/PointSpreadFunctions.jl
are presented. These methods range from propagating field components via the angular spectrum method using Fourier-transforms to a version that applies spatial constraints in each propagation step to avoid wrap-around effects. Another method starts with the analytical solution, sinc(r), with r denoting the distance to the focus, of a related scalar problem, which is then modified to account for various influences of high-NA aplanatic optical systems.
The toolbox supports aberrations as specified via Zernike coefficients.
The toolbox also contains practical tools such as a PSF distillation tool which automatically identifies single point sources and averages their measured images with sub-pixel precision.
Future directions may include ways to identify aberrations from measured PSFs.
The toolbox will also be extended towards supporting a wider range of microscopy modes.
Felix Wechsler is a PhD student at the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology and the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. Before that, Felix obtained Bachelor degrees in physics and informatics where he worked on Light Field Microscopy and Schlieren Imaging.
In his master thesis, he developed a novel kaleidoscopic microscope, the Kaleidomicroscope.
His recent work is implemented in Julia Lang and he is maintainer of several microscopy related packages written in Julia Lang.
Rainer Heintzmann works as a research head and university professor at the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
His research focuses on imaging cellular function at high resolution. His group develops techniques to measure multidimensional information in small biological objects such as cells, cellular organelles or other small structures of interest. A further interest is in computer-based reconstruction methods.
Software packages in Julia and other languages are developed for scientific computing and visualization with a special focus on optics and deconvolution.